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Speaking to the United Nations Security Council, Aaron Maté of The Grayzone calls out the OPCW's ongoing cover-up of its investigation into the alleged April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Aaron also debunks the latest efforts by the OPCW, in a new report put out by the watchdog's Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), to whitewash the scandal. Audio: Aaron Maté's opening remarks to UN Security Council members, March 24 2023. Support Pushback: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

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Will memorializes his beloved cat Marty (RIP Marty), we discuss mammoth burgers, Peter Thiel, cop fent dealers, the GOP primary field and AI rights. But most importantly, the news of the indictment of former President Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury broke as we were recording, so get our live initial reactions to that hilarious and unprecedented news in this ep. Get bonus content on Patreon

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Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is circulating a letter among her House colleagues that calls on the Department of Justice to drop charges against Julian Assange and end its effort to extradite him from his detention in Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Intercept, is still in the signature-gathering phase and has yet to be sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Justice Department has charged Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, for publishing classified information. The Obama administration had previously decided not to prosecute Assange, concerned with what was dubbed internally as the “New York Times problem.” The Times had partnered with Assange when it came to publishing classified information and itself routinely publishes classified information. Publishing classified information is a violation of the Espionage Act, though it has never been challenged in the Supreme Court, and constitutional experts broadly consider that element of the law to be unconstitutional.

“The Espionage Act, as it’s written, has always been applicable to such a broad range of discussion of important matters, many of which have been wrongly kept secret for a long time, that it should be regarded as unconstitutional,” explained Daniel Ellsberg, the famed civil liberties advocate who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

The Obama administration could not find a way to charge Assange without also implicating standard journalistic practices. The Trump administration, unburdened by such concerns around press freedom, pushed ahead with the indictment and extradition request. The Biden administration, driven by the zealous prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, has aggressively pursued Trump’s prosecution. Assange won a reprieve from extradition in a lower British court but lost at the High Court. He is appealing there as well as to the European Court of Human Rights. Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, who has been campaigning globally for his release, said that Assange’s mental and physical health have deteriorated in the face of the conditions he faces at Belmarsh.

Tlaib, in working to build support, urged her colleagues to put their differences with Assange the individual aside and defend the principle of the free press, enshrined in the Constitution. “I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here,” she wrote to her colleagues in early March. “The fact of the matter is that the [way] in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment.”

“In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information.”

Tlaib noted that the Times, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel had put out a joint statement condemning the charges, and alluded to the same problem that gave the Obama administration pause. “The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well,” she wrote. “In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.”

So far, the letter has collected signatures from Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush. Rep. Ro Khanna said he had yet to see the letter but added that he has previously said Assange should not be prosecuted because the charges are over-broad and a threat to press freedom. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is not listed as a signee but told a Seattle audience recently she believes the charges should be dropped. A spokesperson for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she intends to sign before the letter closes.

Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent, said that the relative silence from Congress on the Assange prosecution has undermined U.S. claims to be defending democracy abroad. “In spite of the rhetoric about opposing authoritarianism and defending democracy and press freedom, we really haven’t seen a comparable outcry from Congress — until now,” said Gibbons, whose organization has launched a petition calling on the Justice Department to drop charges. “Rep. Tlaib’s letter isn’t just a breath of fresh air, it’s extremely important for members of Congress to be raising their voices on this, especially those from the same party of the current administration, at this critical juncture in a case that will determine the future of press freedom in the United States.”

A significant number of Democrats continue to hold a hostile view of Assange, accusing him of publishing material that was purloined by Russian agents from the inbox of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. The indictment, however, relates to his publication of government secrets leaked by Chelsea Manning more than a decade ago. “In July 2010, WikiLeaks published approximately 75,000 significant activity reports related to the war in Afghanistan, classified up to the SECRET level, illegally provided to WikiLeaks by Manning,” the indictment reads. “In November 2010, WikiLeaks started publishing redacted versions of U.S. State Department cables, classified up to the SECRET level, illegally provided to WikiLeaks by Manning.”

The U.S. government has made the general claim that Assange’s publication of classified information put sources and allies of the U.S. in harm’s way, though the government has been unable to provide any example of that. Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has left thousands of Afghan civilians, who collaborated with the U.S., to their fates after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, raising questions about the sincerity of their lamentations over the security of those who work with the U.S.

The word “publish” appears more than two dozen times in the superseding indictment of Assange, in which he is accused of “having unauthorized possession of significant activity reports, classified up to the SECRET level [and] publishing them and causing them to be published on the Internet.”

The full letter is below.

Dear Colleague:

I’d like to invite you to join me in writing the Dept. of Justice to call on them to drop the Trump-era charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange. 

I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here. The fact of the matter is that the in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment. 

Defendants charged under the Espionage Act are effectively incapable of defending themselves and often are not allowed access to all the evidence being brought against them, or even to testify to the motivation behind their actions. The information that Mr. Assange worked with major media outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian to publish primarily came from the documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. These documents exposed a number of extremely serious government abuses including torture, war crimes, and illegal mass surveillance.

Mr. Assange’s prosecution marks the first time in US history that the Espionage Act has been used to indict a publisher of truthful information. The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well. In the future, the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.

The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel have taken the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement in opposition to the indictment, warning that it “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.” They are joined in their opposition to Mr. Assange’s prosecution by groups like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Numerous foreign leaders have also expressed their concern and opposition, including Australian PM Albanese, Mexican President AMLO, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and parliamentarians from numerous countries including the UK, Germany, Brazil, and Australia.

If you have any questions or would like to sign on to this letter, please contact Rep. Tlaib’s Policy Advisor… Thank you for your partnership in defending the freedom of the press and the First Amendment.

Sincerely,

Rashida Tlaib
Member of Congress

 

Dear Attorney General Merrick Garland,

We write you today to call on you to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government.

Press freedom, civil liberty, and human rights groups have been emphatic that the charges against Mr. Assange pose a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity, and that a conviction would represent a landmark setback for the First Amendment. Major media outlets are in agreement: The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel have taken the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement in opposition to the indictment, warning that it “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”

The ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Human Rights Watch, among others, have written to you three times to express these concerns. In one such letter they wrote:

“The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”

The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities. Leaders of democracies, major international bodies, and parliamentarians around the globe stand opposed to the prosecution of Assange. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic have both opposed the extradition. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the U.S. government to end its pursuit of Assange. Leaders of nearly every major Latin American nation, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentinian President Alberto Fernández have called for the charges to be dropped. Parliamentarians from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, have all called for Assange not to be extradited to the U.S.

This global outcry against the U.S. government’s prosecution of Mr. Assange has highlighted conflicts between America’s stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange. The Guardian wrote “The US has this week proclaimed itself the beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. If Mr. Biden is serious about protecting the ability of the media to hold governments accountable, he should begin by dropping the charges brought against Mr. Assange.” Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board stated, “At a time when US President Joe Biden has just held a summit for democracy, it seems contradictory to go to such lengths to win a case that, if it succeeds, will limit freedom of speech.”

As Attorney General, you have rightly championed freedom of the press and the rule of law in the United States and around the world. Just this past October the Justice Department under your leadership made changes to news media policy guidelines that generally prevent federal prosecutors from using subpoenas or other investigative tools against journalists who possess and publish classified information used in news gathering. We are grateful for these pro-press freedom revisions, and feel strongly that dropping the Justice Department’s indictment against Mr. Assange and halting all efforts to extradite him to the U.S. is in line with these new policies.

Julian Assange faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one charge for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.  The Espionage Act charges stem from Mr. Assange’s role in publishing information about the U.S. State Department, Guantanamo Bay, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this information was published by mainstream newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, who often worked with Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks directly in doing so. Based on the legal logic of this indictment, any of those newspapers could be prosecuted for engaging in these reporting activities. In fact, because what Mr. Assange is accused of doing is legally indistinguishable from what papers like the New York Times do, the Obama administration rightfully declined to bring these charges. The Trump Administration, which brought these charges against Assange, was notably less concerned with press freedom.

The prosecution of Mr. Assange marks the first time in U.S. history that a publisher of truthful information has been indicted under the Espionage Act. The prosecution of Mr. Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well. In the future the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous for democracy, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution.

Mr. Assange has been detained on remand in London for more than three years, as he awaits the outcome of extradition proceedings against him. In 2021, a U.K. District Judge ruled against extraditing Mr. Assange to the United States on the grounds that doing so would put him at undue risk of suicide. The U.K.’s High Court overturned that decision after accepting U.S. assurances regarding the prospective treatment Mr. Assange would receive in prison. Neither ruling adequately addresses the threat the charges against Mr. Assange pose to press freedom. The U.S. Department of Justice can halt these harmful proceedings at any moment by simply dropping the charges against Mr. Assange.

We appreciate your attention to this urgent issue. Every day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at home. We urge you to immediately drop these Trump-era charges against Mr. Assange and halt this dangerous prosecution.

Sincerely,
Members of Congress

CC: British Embassy; Australian Embassy

 

The post Congressional Effort to End Assange Prosecution Underway appeared first on The Intercept.

For the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, the New York Times published an article by Max Fisher headlined “20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?”

The article is a fairly cogent summation of the evidence. However, when it was first published, it was undermined by an extremely significant and extremely funny mistake. After inquiries from The Intercept, the paper has changed the original mistake into a fresh, new mistake.

Here’s how the article originally read:

Mr. Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors, which was seen in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.

When the American leader was weakened by scandal later that year [in 1998], congressional Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act …

One reason this is so funny is because in 1998 the Times accurately reported what happened. The United Nations inspections team, called UNSCOM, was not expelled by Saddam Hussein, but rather was withdrawn by Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, after he consulted with the U.S. — about the fact that the U.S. was about to start bombing Iraq, in a campaign called Operation Desert Fox.

Even funnier is that the Times went on to claim erroneously that Iraq had expelled UNSCOM in 1998 at least five times, twice in 1999 and then in 2000, 2002 and 2003. It issued corrections on the three latter articles.

Two decades later, the paper apparently wanted to recapture its youth by being wrong again. The paper has now issued its fourth correction on this subject. Its present-day story currently reads:

Hussein had ejected international weapons inspectors in 1997, which was seen in Washington as a humiliating policy failure for Mr. Clinton.

Then, when Mr. Clinton was weakened by scandal in 1998, congressional Republicans pounced, passing the Iraq Liberation Act …

Wonderfully enough, this is also wrong. Iraq did expel the American members of the U.N. inspections team in 1997. But the rest remained in Iraq until they were withdrawn by the United Nations. All, including the Americans, returned to Iraq eight days later.

You can find this information in a story published when it happened, by a little-known paper called the New York Times.

The corrected text in the 2023 story also leaves out the reason Iraq expelled the (American) inspectors in 1997: Because some of the Americans were conducting espionage against Iraq. Again, you can read about this in the New York Times.

If you just want to chuckle morosely about the inability of America’s most prestigious newspaper to get this story right — even now, after two decades, after the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq because of the 2003 invasion — you can stop here. But if you want the details about why this mistake truly matters, please continue reading.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, one of the favorite talking points of its proponents was that Saddam Hussein had expelled the UNSCOM team in 1998. This claim appeared in numerous media outlets, not just the Times.

This little bit of propaganda was popular because of its obvious implication. What possible reason would Iraq have to throw out the U.N. weapons inspectors unless it was hiding something?

Telling the story accurately, however, makes clear why Iraq’s behavior was congruent with having no banned weapons.

The UNSCOM inspections protocol was created by U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, which ended the 1991 Gulf War following Iraq’s retreat from Kuwait. UNSC 687 demanded that Iraq disclose all its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Harsh sanctions would remain on Iraq until it had verifiably done so. At that point, however, the sanctions would be lifted. Also, Iraq’s disarmament would “represent steps towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.”

But President George H.W. Bush immediately announced that the U.S. would ignore all of this, and maintain the sanctions — whether Iraq was or wasn’t disarmed — until Saddam Hussein was forced from power. (You can read about this in the New York Times.) In fact, the sanctions were seen as a way to make life in Iraq so miserable that Iraqis would be motivated to overthrow Saddam.

This stance was later reiterated by President Bill Clinton, as well as his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. What UNSC 687 said didn’t matter; sanctions would remain until Saddam was gone.

Thus Saddam Hussein’s regime had little incentive to cooperate with UNSCOM to begin with. Nevertheless, UNSCOM did an excellent job. We now know Iraq was largely disarmed by the end of 1991. It concealed extensive documentation and some equipment from its WMD programs until 1995, when it was forced to divulge all of it. But by that point, eight years before the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq was essentially clean.

The Iraqi regime understandably believed sanctions should be lifted. As the CIA’s final report on Iraq’s WMD programs put it, “Iraq considered [turning over its remaining material] to be a measure of goodwill and cooperation with the UN.” Internally, the government required WMD scientists to sign a declaration that they wouldn’t hide anything from the U.N., on pain of execution.

At the time Richard Haass, now the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke on a Washington, D.C., panel about the problem Iraqi disarmament presented. “We have to guard,” Haass said, “against the possibility that one day we may not be able to keep the French and Russians in line, that Saddam does comply with so much of the resolutions that the United States can’t sustain the policy … We are clearly in favor of regime change … [but] there’s no reference anywhere in any UN resolution to regime change.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration had grown tired of passively hoping Saddam would be overthrown and turned to more active measures to encourage a coup. This included putting American spies on the UNSCOM team who would purportedly be helping to look for WMD, but were actually there to conduct espionage aimed at Saddam’s removal.

Iraq figured this out fairly quickly. Naturally, Saddam and his regime weren’t enthusiastic about it, given that this would inevitably end in his death. Moreover, they now felt there would never be an end to the sanctions. This led to several famous standoffs between UNSCOM and Iraqi security.

For instance, on December 9, 1998, UNSCOM showed up unannounced at Saddam’s Baath Party headquarters and was denied entry. The CIA WMD report found that Saddam was actually there at the time, and that he “issued orders not to give them access. Saddam did this to prevent the inspectors from knowing his whereabouts, not because he had something to hide.”

The U.S. used this type of noncompliance as justification for the Desert Fox strikes, which took place from December 16 to December 19, 1998. Following this, Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM to return until forced to in the fall of 2002.

Providing an accurate history like this makes clear that the WMD issue was always irrelevant to the U.S. government. When we were helping Iraq in its war with Iran in the 1980s, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons was an embarrassing PR problem but otherwise of no significance. During the Clinton administration, it became a useful PR pretext to keep the sanctions on Iraq and try to overthrow Saddam. Then by 2003, it became a rationale for war.

That’s why the “Saddam threw out the inspectors” error is so pernicious. It leads to other conclusions in the Times article, such as that Saddam “concealed the paltry state of his weapons programs to appear strong at home and deter the Americans.” The evidence for this is, let’s say, extremely dubious. Saddam’s behavior can’t be called wise or good, but it wasn’t some kind of mysterious bluff. Iraq didn’t have WMD, and it kept saying that, over and over again. But Saddam had higher priorities than cooperating with UNSCOM, such as staying alive for the next 20 minutes.

The Times coverage of Iraq and its purported weapons of mass destruction was so atrocious in the lead-up to war in 2003 that the paper eventually had to issue an extensive mea culpa. So you’d like to believe that it now would concentrate on getting it right, at long last. However, that’s clearly a vain dream. It’s inevitable that for the rest of our lives, the Times will intermittently claim Saddam threw out the inspectors. Our only hope to prevent this would be to get reporters at the Times a subscription to the paper.

The post New York Times Makes Glaring Error About Iraq War — Then Corrects It Incorrectly appeared first on The Intercept.

In a matter of a few days, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed when a panic set in, causing a run on deposits. “The blue chip VCs suggested something, then that leaked to other ones, then other ones — we had all our investors calling us and basically demanding we pull our cash,” one source told Ryan Grim. This week on Deconstructed, Grim is joined by Damon Silvers, who has been involved in trying to prevent financial fraud and crisis for more than 20 years. He was the deputy chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the 2008 bank bailout, and was formerly the policy director of the AFL-CIO.

Grim and Silver discuss what led to a rush of Silicon Valley Bank depositors withdrawing all at once, the subsequent fallout, how the weakening of Dodd–Frank in 2018 paved the way for the current banking crisis, and what reforms are needed to prevent a future and even bigger economic catastrophe.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give, where your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com

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Krystal and Saagar discuss the Trump Grand Jury disbanding for 1 Month, Republican voters shredding "Weak" Mike Pence, Trump mocks Desantis over Disney battle, a US Wall Street Journal reporter is detained in Kremlin on accusations of "spying", US blocks a Nordstream investigation by the UN, Zelensky invites China's Xi to Ukraine, Tucker Carlson and Ilhan Omar both blast the Tik Tok Ban bill in Congress, Jamie Dimon forced to testify in Epstein case, Credit Suisse caught in another Fraud Scam, Elon admits that he lost 20 Billion on the Twitter deal, Krystal looks into Blackstone stealing homes from Working Class Americans, and Saagar looks into why the Assault Weapons Ban won't work, and we're joined by Michelle Eisen from Starbucks Workers United to react to CEO Howard Schultz's lies during his hearing.

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Ron Josol takes the audience on a journey to all the countries he’s performed in. And Crystal Ferrier tells us that she will exact revenge on her children. She has planned it out very carefully!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government’s attempt to radically overhaul the Israeli legal and judicial system has sparked widespread protests in Israel. Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets under the banner of defending Israeli democracy.

Very early on in the protests, billboard signs began popping up across Israel that said, “The High Court of Justice is our soldiers’ body armor.” The notion persisted as protests spread. And, likely driven by the fear of losing the court’s protections, a wave of reserve soldiers are declaring their refusal to serve, arguably the protests’ most significant element.

The “body armor” sentiment is largely correct. The perceived independence of the Israeli judiciary is a key factor in preventing international accountability for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians — in the occupation and beyond. Most international court systems will only take up foreign cases if it can be shown that a country’s own system was unable to impartially adjudicate allegations of war crimes.

The situation, however, raises a question that few in Israel have dared to ask: Even without Netanyahu’s reforms, has the judiciary done enough to deal with violations of intranational law? Beyond its work upholding civil rights, have the courts’ rulings on international law merely given Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians a patina of legitimacy, as some progressive Israelis and many Palestinians contend?

A former attorney general, Avichai Mendelblit, was quite blunt in explaining why the country needs its courts to be independent: “The moment that the justice system in Israel isn’t perceived as such,” he warned, “Israel will lose international legitimacy for its military operations and will no longer be shielded from accusations of war crimes.”

Mendelblit’s prediction could soon be put to the test, with Palestinian appeals to the International Criminal Court in The Hague already pending. Losing the appearance of independence may expose Israeli soldiers, military commanders, leaders of the security forces, and even Israeli ministers, past and present, to prosecutions in foreign countries.

Such cases could rise to the level of holding Israel accountable for grave crimes such as torture: Last June, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, in collaboration with the International Federation for Human Rights, requested the ICC’s prosecutors to include the crime of torture in their investigation into the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The question of torture in Israel is just one of several potential grounds for international juridical intervention relating to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Israel’s prolonged occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, its sustaining of an apartheid regime, and the war crimes it has been committing in Gaza would also come to the fore.

Israeli courts’ treatment of torture and other crimes offer some answers as to how impartial the judiciary has really been on crimes against Palestinians — and the Israeli claims of democracy on display in the recent protests.

The Case of Torture

Taking a closer look at how the Israeli judiciary has been addressing allegations of torture reveals what is — and what is not — at stake in the recent legislation in Israel.

In 1999, Israel’s High Court of Justice rendered a ruling which was hailed as putting an end to the use of torture in Israel. Yet, according to data collected by Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and other human rights organizations, Israel still regularly subjects Palestinian detainees to interrogation methods that constitute torture and inhumane and degrading treatment, in clear violation of international law.

Complaints submitted by Palestinians who were interrogated by the Shabak, Israel’s general security service, to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel since 2000 show the persistence of methods that were explicitly forbidden by the High Court in 1999.

An analysis we have conducted of more than 1,500 of these complains, which was funded by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council, shows that physical violence — such as beating, violent shaking, and strangling — is still regularly used in interrogations. Other frequently used interrogation techniques include forcing people into painful stress positions, tight handcuffing, severe sleep deprivation, incommunicado detention, use of family members, threats, humiliations, and prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures.

This is not merely a de facto breach of the ruling: As several recent decisions by the justices make clear, the High Court itself is willing to tolerate and even explicitly approve the use of torture in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law — and, some would argue, the court’s own decision.

Israel has further put in place several judicial mechanisms to address complaints of torture in recent decades. Yet these, too, constantly fail to offer legal remedy to torture victims.

More than 1,300 complaints of torture have been submitted on behalf of Palestinians to the Ministry of Justice between 2001 and June 2021. Only three criminal investigations have been launched. None have resulted in an indictment.

Yet as long as Israel can claim it has robust mechanisms for investigating complaints and independent judicial oversight over its security forces, it can fend against calls for international intervention.

War Crimes Launderer

On Monday night, as Netanyahu was deliberating in his chamber whether to stop the new legislation following the protests and a general strike, right-wing demonstrators assembled in Jerusalem for the first rally in favor of the legislation.

Many of the slogans shouted in this rally were not directly supporting the government, but instead targeting Palestinians. Some were explicit — and, unfortunately, too familiar — calls demanding “death to all Arabs.” Several Palestinian passersby (as well as journalists and other Israelis perceived as “leftist”) were attacked by demonstrators.

It is clear that at least as far as the nationalistic right is concerned, enshrining Jewish supremacy is the goal of this constitutional revolution. This is not an unfounded supposition; it is the professed plan of some of the most senior members in the government, including the national security minister and the minister of finance, who recently openly called for the complete erasure of a Palestinian town.

This legislation must not be passed. Resisting it, though, cannot also be about the freedom of Israeli soldiers and security apparatuses to continue operating — and even killing — with impunity.

Whatever the results of the current constitutional upheaval may be, the world must no longer ignore what is now irrefutable: Israel’s judiciary has served as a war crimes launderer.

When calling to “protect democracy,” we must bear in mind that the High Court of Justice has indeed served as the body armor not just for soldiers, but also for Israel’s anti-democratic practices. For years, the court has condoned Israeli human rights abuses, including settlement expansion, extrajudicial killings, and torture of Palestinian detainees.

Whatever the results of the current constitutional upheaval may be, the world must no longer ignore what is now irrefutable: Israel’s judiciary has served as a war crimes launderer. The international community must intervene to hold Israel accountable for its continued violations of Palestinian rights — an accountability Israel evidently fails to uphold itself.

At the same time, those in Israel protesting in the streets should realize that there is no such thing as a democracy for Jews alone. A true democracy will only be achieved when Israel ends its long-lasting occupation, recognizes the national rights of the Palestinians, and offers protections and equality under the law for all its citizens.

The post Protect the Israeli Judiciary — but Don’t Let It Launder War Crimes Against Palestinians appeared first on The Intercept.

The U.S. media has recently been filled with retrospectives on the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. Most of these outlets eagerly helped the George W. Bush administration sell the war, publishing lavish falsehoods about how Iraq posed a terrible danger to the U.S. (It did not.)

So you might hope that in the past two decades, the same publications have learned the most basic facts about Iraq — and would steer clear of publishing obvious and stupendous errors yet again. You would hope in vain.

One incredible example appeared in a March 13 article in The Atlantic by David Frum, who is best known for serving as a speechwriter for President Bush and coming up with the phrase “axis of evil” in the 2002 State of the Union address. Frum is now a staff writer at The Atlantic, which is probably the most prestigious magazine in America behind the New Yorker. The Atlantic is forthrightly endorsing Frum’s fabrication and will not respond to basic questions about it.

As you may have heard, Bush’s case for war was that Iraq had programs to produce “weapons of mass destruction” — that is, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. In his article, “The Iraq War Reconsidered,” Frum tells us in the first paragraph that Iraq was found to possess “an arsenal of chemical-warfare shells and warheads.”

This is false. You don’t even need to know the details to understand why.

Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, never said a word about this arsenal of chemical weapons that Frum says were discovered by the U.S. This means there are two possibilities:

1. Iraq did have an arsenal of chemical weapons, thus totally vindicating Bush and Cheney and proving that they were right about the most famous political issue on Earth. However, they never mentioned this because they’re super-modest.
2. Iraq did not have an arsenal of chemical weapons.

If you’d like to understand this subject in detail, you can read this long explanation I wrote a few years ago. But the basic story is this:

Iraq deployed a huge quantity of chemical weapons during its war with Iran in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Iraq turned over almost all its chemical munitions to United Nations inspectors, and they were destroyed.

However, Iraq lost track of some of those weapons. It was not intentionally hiding them before the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003; just the opposite. As we now know from the CIA’s $1 billion investigation of the weapons of mass destruction issue, in December 2002, Saddam Hussein’s regime ordered Iraq’s military to “cooperate completely” with the renewed U.N. inspections. Commanders established committees “to ensure their units retained no evidence of old WMD.”

Nonetheless, while occupying Iraq, the U.S. stumbled upon about 5,000 old shells from the 1980s. According to Charles Duelfer, who headed the CIA inquiry, “Keeping in mind that they used 101,000 munitions in the Iran-Iraq War … it’s not really surprising that they have imperfect accounting. I bet the U.S. couldn’t keep track of many of its weapons produced and used during a war.”

Indeed, this is true: The U.S. military lost $1.2 billion of material during just the first year of the Iraq War. It’s also true about chemical weapons specifically. In 1993, a significant quantity of chemical munitions from World War I were discovered in what’s now one of the toniest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice, grew up just a few blocks from the site. In other words, even the most dangerous weapons can be lost in the most unlikely places. The cleanup was still going on decades later, at a cost of more than $250 million.

In fact, lost chemical weapons from World War I continue to be located across the world. During the same period the U.S. was finding 5,000 Iraqi chemical munitions, about the same number were discovered in Europe, mostly in Belgium and France.

Duelfer, asked for his perspective on The Atlantic’s claim, responded via email: “I disagree with [Frum’s] characterization of residual CW stuff as ‘an arsenal.’ What was found were militarily useless remains left over from production during the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam did not know it was around.”

You’d think, well, case closed. All that’s necessary is to notify The Atlantic of its mistake, and they’ll correct it. Obviously they believe in adhering to the most basic standards of honesty.

Nope. In response to questions, Anna Bross, The Atlantic’s senior vice president for communications, emailed, “What is being described in our article matches the definition of ‘arsenal.’ I’m not seeing the point of objection, and certainly not any need for a correction.” (Notably, the current editor of The Atlantic is Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most prominent journalistic supporters of the Iraq War, and last night The Atlantic won a General Excellence award from the American Society of Magazine Editors.)

I sent Bross some obvious follow-up questions. Is The Atlantic saying that Charles Duelfer — again, the head of the Bush administration’s investigation of this — is wrong, and they’re right? Would they publish something saying the U.S. and France both recently possessed an arsenal of chemical weapons? Does The Atlantic think Bush and Cheney just forgot to ever mention this arsenal?

Bross did not write back. I guess that’s for the best because I was planning to move on to ask her about several other astonishing mistakes in Frum’s article.

I’ve followed this issue closely for over 25 years. By the time of the U.S. invasion, I was so sure Iraq had no banned weapons that I bet someone $1,000 about it (quite a lot of money to me).

I was barely a professional writer then. I didn’t even have a blog. So when I saw the media’s blatant, grievous errors in the run-up to war, all I could do was send lots of emails to the fancy publications that were getting it so wrong. They didn’t care, and hundreds of thousands of people died.

They still don’t care. They will continue deceiving their readers about Iraq. There must be something we can do about this, but so far, I haven’t figured out what it is.

The post The Atlantic Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Iraq War With Lavish Falsehoods About Iraq War appeared first on The Intercept.

We’re joined by author and scholar Norman Finkelstein to discuss his new book “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It,” as well as a candid discussion of the political situation in Israel, the modern left, Obama’s legacy, and our old friend Alan Dershowitz.

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In a geopolitical shift, Brazil has come out in favor of accountability for the OPCW's Syria cover-up scandal. At a meeting of UN Security Council members on March 23rd, Brazil criticized the OCW's “poor” handling of the issue and rebuked the UK and other states for blocking the testimony of veteran Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, the OPCW’s first Director General. In response to remarks from The Grayzone's Aaron Maté, Ambassador João Genésio de Almeida Filho, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Brazil, said: "You are clear, you are logical, and you come here with data." The Ambassador then asked Maté for suggestions on how to address the OPCW's Douma controversy. Support Pushback: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Links: Video: "Aaron Mate at UN: OPCW cover-up denies justice to Douma victims" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1BCtPgyxY Aaron Mate: "Burying key evidence, new OPCW report covers up Douma’s unsolved deaths" https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/27/burying-key-evidence-new-opcw-report-covers-up-doumas-unsolved-deaths/ Aaron Mate: "In Douma cover-up, OPCW’s new smoking gun backfires" https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/03/opcw-smoking-gun-backfires/

End of unipolarity w/ Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Mickey takes Zebb to a Bass Pro Shop to buy a gun. Everything seems to be going to plan. But then, Mickey is exposed as an informant by a group in Colorado Springs. With Zebb’s help, Mickey creates a bizarre video railing against the group. Zebb begins to question what’s going on with his friend. But is it too late? 

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Textual is a Python package used to create cross-platform Text User Interfaces (TUI). This may sound like you’ll be creating a user interface with ASCII-art, but that is not the case.

Textual is quite advanced and allows you to add widgets to your terminal applications, including buttons, context switchers, scroll bars, checkboxes, inputs and more.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is install Textual. If you only want to run Textual applications, then the following pip comand is all you need:

python3 -m pip install textual

However, if you want to write your own Textual applications, you should run this command instead:

python3 -m pip install "textual[dev]"

That funny little [dev] part will install some extra dependencies that make developing Textual applications easier.

Run the Textual Demo

The Textual package comes with a demo. You’ll find the demo is a great way to see what types of things you can do with Textual.

Here’s how you can run the demo:

python3 -m textual

When you run the command above in your terminal, you should see something like the following appears:

You can explore Textual in the demo and see the following features:

• Widgets
• Accelerators (i.e. CTRL+C)
• CSS styling
• and more

Creating Your Own Simple Application

While the demo is a great place to start to get a feel for what you can do with Textual, it’s always better to dive into the docs and start writing some real code.

You will understand how things work much quicker if you write the code yourself and then start changing the code piece by piece. By going through this iterative process, you’ll learn how to build a little at a time and you’ll have a series of small failures and successes, which is a great way to build up your confidence as you learn.

The first step to take when creating a Textual application is to import Textual and subclass the App() class. When you subclass App(), you create a Textual application. The App() class contains all the little bits and bobs you need to create your very own terminal application.

To start off, create a new Python file in your favorite text editor or IDE and name it hello_textual.py.

Next, enter the following code into your new file:

from textual.app import App


class HelloWorld(App):
    ...


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = HelloWorld()
    app.run()

When you go to run your terminal application, you should run it in a terminal. Some IDEs have a terminal built-in, such as VS Code and PyCharm. Textual may or may not look correct in those terminals though.

Whenever possible, it is recommended that you run Textual applications in your external terminal. Your applications will look and behave better there most of the time. On Mac, it is recommended that you use iTerm rather than the built-in terminal as the built-in Terminal application hasn’t been updated in quite some time.

To run your new terminal application, you will need to run the following command:

python3 hello_textual.py

When you run this command, you will see the following:

Oops! That’s kind of like creating a blank black box! That’s probably not what you want after all.

To exit a Textual application, press CTRL+C. When you do, you will exit the application and return to the normal terminal.

That was exciting, but the user interface was very plain. You can fix that up a bit by adding a label in the next section!

Adding a Label

Now that you are back to your original terminal, go back to your Python editor and create a new file. This time you will name it hello_textual2.py.

Enter the following code into your new Python file:

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import Label


class HelloWorld(App):

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield Label("Hello Textual")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = HelloWorld()
    app.run()

Your HelloWorld() class was empty before. Now you added a compose() method. The compose() method is where you normally setup your widgets.

A widget is a user interface element, such as a label, a text box, or a button. In this example, you add a Label() with the text “Hello World” in it.

Try running your new code in your terminal and you should see something like this:

Well, that looks a little better than the original. But it would be nice to have a way to close your application without using CTRL+C.

One common way to close an application is with a Close button. You’ll learn how to add one of those next!

Adding a Close Button

When you create a user interface, you want to communicate with the user about how they can close your application. A terminal application already has a way to close the terminal itself by way of its exit button.

However, you usually want a way to close your Textual application without closing the terminal itself. You have been using CTRL+C for this.

But there’s a better way! You can add a Button widget and connect an event handler to it to close the function.

To get started, open up a new Python file in your Python editor of choice. Name this one hello_textual3.py and then enter the following code:

# hello_textual3.py

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import Button, Label


class HelloWorld(App):

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        self.close_button = Button("Close", id="close")
        yield Label("Hello Textual")
        yield self.close_button

    def on_mount(self) -> None:
        self.screen.styles.background = "darkblue"
        self.close_button.styles.background = "red"

    def on_button_pressed(self, event: Button.Pressed) -> None:
        self.exit(event.button.id)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = HelloWorld()
    app.run()

The first change you’ll encounter is that you are now importing a Button in addition to your Label.

The next change is that you are assigning the Button to self.close_button in your compose() function before yielding the button. By assigning the button to a class variable or attribute, you can more easily access it later to change some features around the widget.

The on_mount() method is called when your application enters application mode. Here you set the background of your app (the screen) to “darkblue” and you set the background color of the close button to “red”.

Lastly, you create an on_button_pressed() method, which is your event handler for catching when a button is pressed. When the close button is pressed, the on_button_pressed()  is called and your application exits. You pass in the button’s id to tell the application which button was used to close it, although you don’t use that information here.

It’s time to try running your code! When you do, you should see the following:

So far so good. Your application is looking great!

Now you’re ready to learn the basics of styling your application with CSS.

Adding Style with CSS

Textual let you apply a style using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) in much the same way that web developers use CSS. You write the CSS file in a separate file that ends with the following extension: .css

By separating out the style from the logic, you can follow the Model-View-Controller design pattern. But even if you don’t follow that pattern, it lets you separate the logic from the design and can make iterating on your design easier.

To get started, you will first update your Python file so that it uses a CSS file. Open up your Python editor and create a new file named hello_textual_css.py, then enter the following code into it:

# hello_textual_css.py

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import Button, Label


class HelloWorld(App):
    CSS_PATH = "hello.css"

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        self.close_button = Button("Close", id="close")
        yield Label("Hello Textual", id="hello")
        yield self.close_button

    def on_mount(self) -> None:
        self.screen.styles.background = "darkblue"
        self.close_button.styles.background = "red"

    def on_button_pressed(self, event: Button.Pressed) -> None:
        self.exit(event.button.id)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = HelloWorld()
    app.run()

The only change here is to add the class attribute, CSS_PATH, right after your HelloWorld() class definition. The CSS_PATH can be a relative or absolute path to your CSS file.

In the example code above, you use a relative path to a file named hello.css which should be saved in the same folder as your Python file.

You can now create hello.css in your Python or text editor. Then enter the following code into it:

Screen {
    layout: grid;
    grid-size: 2;
    grid-gutter: 2;
    padding: 2;
}
#hello {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    column-span: 2;
    content-align: center bottom;
    text-style: bold;
}

Button {
    width: 100%;
    column-span: 2;
}

The Screen mentioned here maps to the self.screen object in your code. You are telling Textual that you want to use a grid layout where the number two signifies that the grid will be two columns wide and include two rows.

The spacing between rows is controlled by the grid-gutter. Finally, you set padding to add spacing around the content of the widget itself.

The #hello tag matches to the hello id of a widget in your code. In this case, your Label has the id of “hello”. So everything in the curly braces that follows the #hello tag controls the style of your Label. You want the label to span across both columns, and the text-style to be bold. You also set the width and height to 100%.

Finally, you have some styling to add to Button widgets. There’s only one here, but this would apply to all buttons if you had additional ones. You are setting the width of the button to 100% and telling it to span both columns.

Now that the explanation is out of the way, you are ready to try running your code. When you do, you should get something like this:

The button is now nice and large, but you could certainly make the text of the label a bit bigger. You should try and figure out how to do that as a stretch goal!

Wrapping Up

Textual is amazing! The demo has many more examples than what is covered here as does the Textual documentation

Here is what you learned from this article:

• The Textual Demo
• Creating a Label
• Adding a button
• Using a layout
• Styling with CSS

This article barely scratches the surface of all the amazing features that Textual has to offer. Keep an eye on this website though, as there are lots more articles on Textual coming soon!

The post An Intro to Textual – Creating Text User Interfaces with Python appeared first on Mouse Vs Python.

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's wild rally in Waco, Texas, Desantis donors beginning to question him, Trump promising "Death and Destruction", Krystal and Saagar debate if we should ban TikTok, TikTok CEO appears in Congress, Biden bombs Syria after US contractor is killed, Putin promises to deploy Tactical Nukes in Belarus, MSNBC Resistance Hero Malcolm Nance exposed as a Ukraine War grifter, Krystal looks into a Big Green energy scam in ESG, and Tim Urban joins the show to talk about his new book "What's Our Problem?".

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Sina’s back to talk to me about my latest Substack article, “Multiculturalism is over in Canada. It’s back to Sinophobia.” It’s about the scandal unfolding in the Canadian media since Fife & Chase broke their anonymous CSIS-leak-sourced story about Chinese interference in Canadian elections in February. I’m worried about racist incitement and scandal-mongering. Sina thinks … Continue reading "AER 121: Multiculturalism is over in Canada"

Co-hosts Gary Brecher & Mark Ames

Maidan snipers & Ukrainian proxies w/ Ivan Katchanovski, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss the US banking crisis in this episode of their program Geopolitical Economy Hour. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=y1je89h1eIg Check out other episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP

China sponsored peace talks that led Saudi Arabia and Iran to normalize diplomatic relations, in a big blow to the petrodollar. Both countries are major oil producers that have applied to join BRICS and are discussing selling energy in other currencies. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DyAFerEouN0 BRICS challenges US ‘dollar dominance’, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: New multipolar economic order: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/21/brics-us-dollar-saudi-oil-currency-multipolar

Professor Robert Buzzanco joins us to discuss the end of the Vietnam War, to include fragging and dissent among the troops, the horrors that came with the Christmas bombings, and […]

China's President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin, where they pledged "changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years", agreeing to deepen economic integration and challenge the hegemony of the US dollar by promoting the use of the yuan and other currencies in international trade. VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OddmSjjLgLY BRICS challenges US ‘dollar dominance’, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/21/brics-us-dollar-saudi-oil-currency-multipolar/ Geopolitical game changer: China’s Iran-Saudi peace deal is big blow to petrodollar and US economic hegemony: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/17/china-iran-saudi-peace-petrodollar Ukraine’s Zelensky admits he sabotaged Minsk peace deal with Russia, West blocked negotiations: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/02/10/ukraine-zelensky-minsk-peace-russia

The Russian government has accused Germany, Denmark, and Sweden of a cover-up in their investigations into the sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines last September. Moscow, with the support of China, plans to introduce a resolution before the United Nations Security Council on Monday calling for an independent international investigation.

The White House declined to answer questions from The Intercept about whether the U.S. has ordered its own investigation, saying only that it is supporting its allies in their individual probes. Germany, along with Denmark and Sweden, are each conducting separate investigations but say they are cooperating with one another.

In a series of letters to European governments and the United States in February, made public by Moscow earlier this month, Russian officials complained that they have been barred from examining evidence gathered from the sites where the blasts occurred. Despite Russia’s majority ownership of the pipelines, Russian officials said, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have rejected Russia’s repeated requests for a joint investigation — confirming their “suspicions that these countries are trying to conceal evidence, or to cover up the sponsors and perpetrators of these acts of sabotages.”

Russia has been doing its own investigation into the sabotage, including underwater surveys. It has not, to date, released any forensic evidence to support its assertion that “Anglo-Saxon” powers or the U.S. were behind the explosions. At a U.N. Security Council meeting in February, Russia’s representative Vassily Nebenzia cited investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report accusing the U.S. of carrying out the attack. “This journalist is telling the truth,” he said. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”

Denmark and Sweden have cited procedural matters and national regulations as to why they aren’t collaborating with Russia. But it’s pretty obvious that they have also adopted the position that Russia should be viewed as a suspect in the sabotage and wouldn’t want to invite it into the probe, particularly given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It should be noted that Sweden also refused an official joint investigation with its own allies from the onset, opting for a less formal cooperative arrangement. German officials have publicly confirmed their investigation into a “pro-Ukrainian” group and its possible connection to the attack on the pipeline, but have also cautioned that it could be a “false flag” intended to conceal the sponsor.

Russia’s recent maneuvers signal that it is becoming more aggressive in its rhetoric toward the two Scandinavian nations and Germany and is breaking some diplomatic protocols by making public its private communications with various nations. It is effectively arguing that the three national probes, which are backed by the U.S., are part of the Nord Stream bombing plot, and it wants to pull the U.N. in, where Russia would find a more neutral audience than NATO or the European Union. The backdrop to all of this, of course, is the public display of Russia-China unity that’s unfolded over the past year, culminating with President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow. China, which is officially co-sponsoring the Russian resolution, has said it believes the attack was carried out by a state actor and that a U.N. investigation is needed to “uncover the truth and identify those responsible.”

Underwater Evidence?

Almost immediately after the pipeline explosion on September 26, 2022, the Russian government asked the governments of Sweden, Germany, and Denmark to participate in their national investigations into “deliberate acts of sabotage” against “one of the most important investment projects of the Russian Federation.” All three governments rejected Russia’s requests, and Moscow has said that they are not sharing any meaningful information with Russian authorities.

That position is hardly surprising given the war in Ukraine and the massive NATO and European weapons shipments aimed at defeating Moscow. Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, has been outspoken in his criticisms of the Danish government’s refusal to cooperate with Russia. He has rejected speculation Russia was behind the attacks, saying that its ships did not have access to the waters where the explosives were placed. “The preparation of such attacks requires time and direct presence in the area of sabotage, which was carried out in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden,” Barbin said. “The Russian side, unlike the others, did not have permission for any underwater work or research in this area before the gas pipelines were blown up.”

Russia is effectively arguing that the three national probes, which are backed by the U.S., are part of the Nord Stream bombing plot.

The sabotage of the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines occurred in the Baltic Sea waters stretching around the Danish island of Bornholm and extending to the southeast of the Swedish coast. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, nestled between Lithuania and Poland, is to the east of the area. The Nord Stream pipelines are majority-owned by Russia’s state-run energy firm Gazprom.

In contrast to Barbin’s contentions, a new report published by the German outlet T-Online, asserts that Russian vessels, possibly including a mini-submarine, were operating in the waters near the blast sites days before the sabotage. The article cites open-source satellite data and relied on information provided by an anonymous “intelligence source.”

On February 17, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry fired off letters not only to Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, but also to the U.S. and Norway, charging an apparent cover-up. On March 1, Russia submitted its correspondence with those nations to the U.N. Security Council as part of Moscow’s push for the U.N. to initiate its own independent probe of the Nord Stream attack.

The U.S., which opposes the resolution, has portrayed Russia’s efforts to litigate the pipeline bombing at the security council as a “blatant attempt to distract” from its yearlong war in Ukraine. In a joint letter submitted to the council in late February, Germany, Sweden and Denmark claimed, “Russian authorities have been informed regarding the ongoing investigations,” adding that the three nations “have been in dialogue regarding the investigation of the gas leaks, and the dialogue will continue to the relevant extent.”

On February 21, a Gazprom-contracted ship doing a survey discovered an antenna-like device that Russia alleged might be a component of the materials used in the sabotage of the pipeline or part of a triggering mechanism for an unexploded bomb on an underwater pipe. “Specialists believe it might be an antenna to receive a signal to detonate an explosive device that could have been — I’m not certain, but it’s possible — planted under the pipeline system,” said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in an interview with Russian television on March 14. “It appears that several explosive devices were planted,” Putin said, adding, “Some of them went off, and some didn’t. The reasons are unclear.”

He also alleged that the device was discovered attached to an undersea pipe junction on the only string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline where no explosion was registered last September. “We would like to receive permission from the Danish government [to] conduct the necessary examination either on our own, or jointly with them,” Putin said. “Better yet, establish an international group of experts and bomb engineers that could work at a depth like that. And if need be, to defuse the explosive device, of course, if there is one down there.” Putin said his government had made discreet inquiries to the Danish authorities proposing a joint effort. “Their response was ambiguous,” he said. “To put it bluntly, there was really no answer at all. They said that [we] need to wait.”

Denmark’s government ultimately confirmed that there was an object in the area identified by the Russians and that it was investigating. There was a flurry of activity in late March — with Danish military vessels and diving ships congregating in the waters around the site identified by the personnel aboard the Glomar Worker, the ship that reportedly found the suspicious object. On March 21, the Danish newspaper Berlingske reported that Russia believes the “antenna” was “part of a device from an explosive charge on the last of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines.” Only three of the lines were successfully damaged in the sabotage, and it has confounded researchers why one was left intact. “It is a cylindrical object about 30 centimeters high and 10-15 centimeters in diameter and was located approximately 28 kilometers from the explosion site,” Barbin said in a statement to Berlingske. “It was installed at a welding joint on the B line.”

On March 23, the Danish Energy Agency released a photograph of an object roughly fitting the dimensions offered by Russia. The object appeared to have been submerged for a long time and was covered by a layer of algae or other foliage. “It is possible that the object is a maritime smoke buoy,” asserted the Danish statement. Such devices are commonly used to mark an area where someone has gone overboard or to alert other ships to a problem. The government agency said it had invited the owners of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, effectively Russia, to participate in the salvage. The Kremlin labeled the Danish invitation “positive news.”

It’s possible that the Danish government was essentially trolling the Russians by posting the photo and making a public offering to allow Russia to participate in the retrieval of what Denmark alleged is a harmless civilian device but that Moscow implied was potentially an unexploded bomb.

In its initial news report on the Danish invitation to Russia to participate in retrieving the object, the Russian state-owned TASS news agency did not mention the possibility it was a “smoke buoy,” instead doubling down on Russian theories it may be a component of an unexploded device. “It is critically important to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to this terrorist act — apparently it is — and to continue this investigation,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on March 24. “And this investigation must be transparent.” Denmark has said “the object does not pose an immediate safety risk.”

That chapter of this story appears to have ended with a whimper rather than a bang. “I do not think it makes sense for us to get into that now, since one of the NATO countries, or Denmark, told us that they had already examined it, which means that the situation is not explosive,” Putin told a Russian news network on May 25, adding that it no longer was necessary for Russian specialists to participate in a retrieval operation. “Honestly speaking, for us, the point was not to incriminate someone, but to ensure security so that there would be no other explosions,” he said. “If the Danes say that it is no longer explosive, well, thank God.”

In a recent op-ed in the Danish newspaper Altinget, Barbin, the Russian ambassador, accused Denmark of engaging in speculative analysis since the explosion last September with an aim to assign blame for the attack. In Danish media, some prominent military analysts have spent considerable time discussing potential Russian culpability for blowing up its own pipeline. Barbin asserted that this “intellectual exercise, without presenting facts that should be verifiable, leads to a dead end and benefits only those who are afraid of the truth.” He said Denmark should provide an update to a variety of questions: “Which naval vessels — including military ships — were present in the sabotage area? Are there any witnesses who have been questioned and what is their testimony? Were fragments of broken gas pipelines raised and what are the results of their research? Which companies — especially foreign ones — were allowed to work in Denmark’s and Sweden’s exclusive economic zone, and were their activities audited?”

These are all fair questions, which may well be answered once the governments complete their probes. Denmark and Sweden have both remained tightlipped, and scant details have leaked from either government. While there are likely multiple layers contributing to the hyper-secrecy, the stakes are obviously high, particularly if evidence leads to a nation-state actor, such as the U.S., Russia, or Ukraine, as the perpetrator.

False Flag vs. “False Concoctions”

In the public discourse, Seymour Hersh’s report in February that the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up in a covert operation authorized by President Joe Biden has become something of a Rorschach test in the broader context of the war in Ukraine and the hostilities between the U.S., NATO, and Russia.

Hersh himself appears entirely unfazed by the mounting attacks on his credibility. This, he asserts, is what powerful forces do: They seek to destroy the messenger to distract from the crime. When pressed on some of the criticism of his reporting, including apparent inconsistencies raised by open-source data on ship and aircraft movements during the alleged operation, Hersh has cut his questioners short and asserted that he hasn’t even published 20 percent of what he knows or what his sources have told him. He has all but said that he used additional sources and is playing his own game of cat and mouse to protect them. Moreover, he has argued, these OSINT warriors are naive to believe that the CIA and other U.S. agencies would not have taken extensive steps to cloak the operation.

At 85 years old, Hersh is staking his storied and well-earned reputation as one of the premiere muckrakers in modern U.S. history on the veracity of this one story. It may appear to be a crazy gamble, particularly if it is based on a single source, but it also serves as a powerful symbol of how right Hersh believes he is. In essence, Hersh is forcing the question: Do we really believe Sy Hersh would do this if it wasn’t true?

This same dynamic has played out with several of Hersh’s stories over the past decade since he left the New Yorker. It was true of his 2015 story for the London Review of Books alleging that President Barack Obama and his administration lied about almost every detail of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. And it was also the case with both his 2013 LRB article and his 2017 story for the German newspaper Welt asserting that the U.S. was falsely accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army of using chemical weapons. Hersh’s detractors say he is not the journalist he once was and is peddling false theories based on dubious or fictional assertions from anonymous sources. Hersh maintains he got these stories right and that he continues to use the same quality of fact-checker, editor, and lawyer he had reviewing his work at the New Yorker.

In his most recent post on Substack, Hersh criticizes reports in the New York Times and multiple German media outlets that among the perpetrators of the sabotage was a “pro-Ukrainian group” that rented a private boat using false passports. Hersh alleged that the entire story, based on anonymous U.S. intelligence and German law enforcement sources, was a false-flag operation and that the assertions published by the Times and Die Zeit “originated with a group of CIA experts in deception and propaganda whose mission was to feed the newspaper a cover story—and to protect a president who made an unwise decision and is now lying about it.” Hersh writes:

“It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story,” I was told by a source within the American intelligence community. The disinformation professionals inside the CIA understand that a propaganda gambit can only work if those on receiving are desperate for a story that can diminish or displace an unwanted truth. And the truth in question is that President Joe Biden authorized the destruction of the pipelines and will have a difficult time explaining away his action as Germany and its Western European neighbors suffer as businesses are shuttered amid high day-to-day energy costs.

Hersh also asserted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to the White House in early March was, in part, aimed at preparing the rollout of the cover story developed by the CIA and its German counterparts. “I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2,” Hersh writes. “In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was ‘to pulse the system’ in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction.”

Hersh is staking his storied and well-earned reputation as one of the premiere muckrakers in modern U.S. history on the veracity of this one story.

For people who have already concluded that Hersh is either fabricating this story or relying on bad sources, his latest story is evidence that he is trapped in a hall of mirrors and seeing conspiracies in every direction he looks. Holger Stark, the lead reporter on the German story Hersh claims was the product of a CIA deception campaign, addressed Hersh in a tweet: “Sy, old colleague, I admire your historical work and it hurts tremendously to say it: But this is, at least in respect to our work at Die Zeit, complete BS. And if you write about me: call next time before you publish. You would avoid a lot of mistakes.” Stark has collaborated with The Intercept on an investigation into the U.S. drone program and Germany’s role and was one of the main German journalists reporting on Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency documents for Der Spiegel.

For those who believe that Hersh has correctly identified the perpetrator of the Nord Stream bombing — the U.S. government — it is plausible that the information fed to the Times and German news outlets about the “pro-Ukrainian group” is suspicious and part of a deception operation. Last June — two months before the Nord Stream explosions — the CIA reportedly offered German intelligence and other European governments a “strategic warning” of a potential plot to blow up the pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The warning included information about three Ukrainian nationals who were trying to rent out ships in countries bordering the Baltic Sea, including Sweden.”

It could well be that the U.S. was simply sharing its intel with allies with a direct stake in such an action. It could also be that this is where a potential deception operation involving a “pro-Ukrainian group” began. What does not seem likely is that the cover story was created in response to Hersh. More plausible, if this is indeed a cover story, was that it was planned long before Hersh wrote his story and was designed to deceive or misdirect U.S. allies and the world about who was responsible. Stark, the German journalist who heads Die Zeit’s investigative unit, said he had been working on his story, based on the German criminal probe, for months and rushed to publish only after he learned the New York Times was going to post its “pro-Ukraine group” story, which was based on the claims of anonymous U.S. intelligence operatives. Hersh later updated his piece to reflect this.

In his latest story, Hersh lambasted the U.S. press corps for refusing to ask the White House about his assertions the U.S. blew up the pipeline. “There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally ‘task’ the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea. According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.”

I asked the White House Hersh’s specific question and also for comment on Hersh’s assertions about the private meeting between Biden and Scholz and the CIA manufacturing a cover story. In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson did not directly address any of my questions. “These stories are totally false concoctions,” Watson said. “We can say categorically that the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosions in any way. We continue to support efforts with our allies and partners to get to the bottom of what happened.”

During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s appearance before the House Committee on Appropriations on March 23, Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, asked Blinken: “You’re now in a formal setting. Can you assure the world that no agency of the U.S. government blew up those pipelines or facilitated that action?”

“Yes, I can,” Blinken replied.

Update: March 25, 2023, 8:00 p.m. ET
This piece has been updated with comments made by Putin on March 25 saying Russia would not retrieve the underwater object.

Update: March 27, 2023, 3:57 p.m. ET
On Monday, Russia’s UN resolution calling for an independent investigation of Nord Stream sabotage failed. Russia, China, and Brazil voted in favor. The other 12 council members abstained.

The post Russia Calls for U.N. Investigation of Nord Stream Attack, as Hersh Accuses White House of False Flag appeared first on The Intercept.

Coffee is grown commercially on four continents and consumed enthusiastically on all seven. How did our obsession with the humble coffee bean begin?

On Saturday, the New York Times published a blockbuster story that said two prominent Texas Republicans flew across the Mideast in the summer of 1980 for secret meetings with regional leaders to urge them to tell Iran to keep the U.S. hostages in Tehran until after the election that pitted GOP candidate Ronald Reagan against then-President Jimmy Carter.

The Times reported that Ben Barnes, a key figure in Texas politics, said he made the trip with former Texas Gov. John Connally, a major supporter of Reagan’s campaign, and that when they returned home, Connally met in an airport lounge with William Casey, who’d been a top U.S. spy during World War II and was then Reagan’s campaign manager. Connally and Casey discussed the trip, according to Barnes, who The Times quoted as saying, “History needs to know that this happened.” After Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, Reagan appointed Casey head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All this is powerful evidence that the Reagan campaign did — as has been alleged for decades — strike a deal with the Iranian government to prevent the hostages from being released. While that has never been proven, what’s known beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the Reagan campaign was deeply worried that Carter might get the hostages out before November and thereby give a big boost to his prospects.

You might understandably ask: If this actually happened, how could it have been kept secret? Why hasn’t anyone with knowledge of it spoken up before? The answer is that it hasn’t been kept secret, and many, many people have said it occurred. But most of the people doing so have been foreigners. Barnes is merely the most important American to finally come out and support the story.

The 1980 October Surprise theory has always been plausible on its face. Casey had worked on Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign (and was later named head of the Securities and Exchange Commission by Nixon). It’s since been proven that the Nixon’s presidential campaign secretly collaborated with the government of South Vietnam to prevent President Lyndon Johnson from striking a peace deal ending the Vietnam War. The Nixon campaign was concerned that peace would help his opponent in the race, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Nixon’s cynicism can be measured by the fact that thanks to his gambit, 20,000 additional American soldiers, plus unknown hundreds of thousands of other people, died as the war continued for many years.

The concept of the October Surprise seems almost benign in comparison. A mere 52 American hostages had been seized by Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and all the scheme required was keeping them there for another few months.

Most of the important digging on this subject was done by the late Robert Parry, a one-time Associated Press reporter and founder of Consortium News. Parry and others found that an astonishing array of people at the top of world politics had said things similar to Barnes, long before Barnes spoke out. Here are the most important:

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr

Bani-Sadr was the president of post-revolutionary Iran from January 1980 until June 1981, when he was impeached and fled the country.

In Bani-Sadr’s 1991 memoir, “My Turn to Speak,” he wrote that:

In late October 1980, everyone was openly discussing the agreement with the Americans on the Reagan team. In the October 27 issue of Enghelab Eslami [“Islamic Revolution,” Bani-Sadr’s newspaper] I published an editorial saying that Carter was no longer in control of U.S. foreign policy and had yielded the real power to those who … had negotiated with the mullahs on the hostage affair.

The House of Representatives conducted an investigation of the subject, which was released in 1993. It patronizingly concluded that “Bani-Sadr’s analysis demonstrates how some Iranians may have mistakenly misled themselves to believe that Khomeini representatives met with Reagan campaign officials.”

When Ben Affleck’s movie “Argo” was released in 2013, Bani-Sadr said more:

Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the “October Surprise,” which prevented the attempts by myself and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages. … Two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret.

When Bani-Sadr died in 2021, his New York Times obituary discreetly did not mention any of this.

Yitzhak Shamir

Shamir served two terms as Israel’s prime minister in the 1980s and early 1990s. At the time of the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, he was Israel’s minister of foreign affairs.

The subject of the October Surprise came up when Shamir was interviewed by several reporters in 1993, after Shamir had left office. When one asked Shamir whether it had happened, Shamir immediately responded, “Of course. … I know in America, they know it.”

Shamir then declined to elaborate.

Yasser Arafat

Arafat was head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian National Authority. In 1996, he met with Carter in the Gaza Strip. According to historian Douglas Brinkley, Arafat told Carter, “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the election. I want you to know that I turned them down.”

“The Good Spy” by Kai Bird includes a fascinating tale of a Lebanese businessman named Mustafa Zein who claimed to have acted as a go-between Arafat and Jack Shaw, who worked with Casey on the Reagan campaign. Shaw told Bird that this was all a big misunderstanding on Zein’s part. Arafat, according to Zein, eventually told him that Casey had struck a deal directly with the Iranians at a meeting in Spain.

Alexandre de Marenches

In 1980, de Marenches was the head of France’s external intelligence agency, the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage. The 1993 House investigation spoke with David Andelman, a journalist who had co-written de Marenches’s memoirs.

Andelman said de Marenches had told him off the record that he was involved in “setting up a meeting in Paris between Casey and some Iranians in late October of 1980.”

The House investigation also spoke to de Marenches, who denied any involvement in 1980 skullduggery. De Marenches traveled to California in December 1980, just after the election, to meet with Reagan. After Reagan took office, de Marenches became a close Reagan adviser.

The Russian Government

The House task force sent a request to the Russian government for any information it had in its intelligence files on the subject of the Reagan campaign in 1980. At the time, the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and the Russian government was eager for good relations with America, so it was incentivized to help the U.S. Congress.

Russia response was yes, the October Surprise happened. Part of it read: “William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership. … The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris.”

These claims from Russia, however, did not appear in the investigation’s final declassified report. They were in the classified version, however. We know this because Parry stumbled across it when he went to the U.S. Capitol to pick up a regular copy of the report, but he was accidentally sent to a storage room full of copies of the classified version.

Parry wrote that he subsequently spoke to “one well-placed official in Europe who checked with the Russian government.” This official told him the Russian considered the report “a bomb” and “couldn’t believe it was ignored.”

The George H.W. Bush White House

As the House investigation put it, the main October Surprise allegation was that “during the summer of 1980, William Casey and other Americans met on several occasions in Madrid with … two Iranian officials sent at the direction of the Khomeini regime.” They asked the George H.W. Bush administration to produce any records the U.S. government might have on this subject. The House task force looked at everything and concluded “the evidence allegedly supporting each of these meetings was neither from credible sources nor corroborated.”

Here’s the funny thing, though. In 2011, Parry was looking through the records of the Bush Presidential Library. And there he found a memo from associate White House counsel Chester Paul Beach Jr., recording a conversation he’d had with State Department legal adviser Edwin D. Williamson about getting the relevant documents to the House investigators. Williamson, Beach wrote, had told him that they’d found “a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.”

This memo from Beach and the mysterious cable from the Madrid embassy were somehow never turned over to the House investigation. Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who’d led the inquiry, wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016 asking for the cable. He did not receive it. For Kai Bird’s book “The Outlier,” which includes a chapter of additional evidence about an October Surprise, Bird submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the cable. The State Department likewise has not produced it for Bird — even after he filed a lawsuit in 2019 — informing him that they can’t find it.

At this point, even James Baker, first Reagan’s chief of staff and later his treasury secretary (and then Bush’s secretary of state), won’t say Casey wasn’t in Madrid. Asked about it by one-time Carter staffer Stuart Eizenstat, he responded: “Would I be surprised if Casey did it? There is nothing about Casey that would surprise me. He is a piece of work.”

Those are the highlights — but there is, believe it or not, more where this came from. The October Surprise story has long been derided as a conspiracy theory, and still has not been conclusively proven. But at this point, a belief that nothing out of the ordinary happened in 1980 requires faith in an enormous number of coincidences — so many that you might call it a coincidence theory.

The post A Short History of Everyone Who Confirmed Reagan’s October Surprise Before the New York Times appeared first on The Intercept.

Our live show from the Hell on Earth launch party at Littlefield in NYC on 1/20/23. We discuss the life of alchemist, mathematician and courtier John Dee, and look into the intersection of magic and politics in early modern Europe.

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