THE OTHER SIDE OF EPSTEIN - FROM RT

 

The Epstein-Israel link nobody wants you to take seriously

While trafficking young girls, he was also part of an effort to export military-grade systems to governments around the world

By Rachel Marsden, a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

rachelmarsden.com

RT composite. ©  Getty Images / vadimrysev; Wachira Wacharapathom; Rick Friedman Photography / Corbis via Getty Images

When I first moved to New York, I walked into my new dentist’s office and genuinely wondered whether I’d accidentally wandered into a Victoria’s Secret audition.

The waiting room was full of stunning young women. Eventually I learned the dentist shared space with a modeling agency. You couldn’t tell who was getting veneers and who was getting a contract until you were halfway down the hallway.

Jeffrey Epstein’s life operated on the same architectural principle: two businesses shoved into one building, one involving underaged girls, the other involving powerful political figures, including some tied to the Israeli government. Not exactly whitening trays and catwalks, but equally disorienting.

Epstein’s whole operation was like a perverted crossover episode of “Law & Order” meets “House of Cards.” The salacious half got all the airtime, but the geopolitical part seems to have largely ended up on the cutting room floor.

Jeremy Scahill’s Dropsite News recently published inbox receipts showing that in 2006 Epstein teamed up with lawyer Alan Dershowitz to smack down “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Dershowitz wrote the rebuttal, “Debunking the Newest – and Oldest – Jewish Conspiracy,” and Epstein blasted it out to his rich and powerful pals. Perhaps a little light reading en route to Epstein island or while being rubbed down by a member of Epstein’s harem.

The moment anyone points out that a certain foreign government might be exercising influence, there’s always someone who starts shouting about bigotry. Because apparently some nations think that criticism of their foreign policy is like a trap door in one of those Indiana Jones movies, capable of sparking a chain reaction that can bring the whole thing crashing down.

Read more

 Congress warns Clintons over Epstein case

Epstein’s connections to Israel have been whispered about for years. His right-hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell, currently a guest at Uncle Sam’s big house, is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a Brit whose résumé included business tycoon, media mogul, and all-around establishment leechlord with enough Israeli intelligence ties to qualify for a final permanent nap there. His mysterious death at sea came with a Jerusalem memorial service and a burial on the Mount of Olives. Was London fully booked that weekend?

Then there was Epstein’s friendship with former Israeli prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak. The two worked together to export Israeli cyberwarfare tools disguised as tech and security startups, including to Washington – which is either in on the notion of having Israeli tech spy on Americans for them, or too stupid to realize the difference between being sold an aromatherapy diffuser or a flamethrower.

Recently released emails show that Epstein also arranged meetings between Israel and Russian officials during the war in Syria. But officially, there’s absolutely nothing suspicious in any of this. Unless it’s Russian interference that you’re criticizing in that case, then you’re probably just a bigot.

But Epstein-style offensive and defensive influence efforts, investments in which have recently been promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are hardly exclusive to America.

The Eurovision Song Contest is the latest institution to enter an Israeli-sponsored Twilight Zone episode. Euronews recently asked: “What are Eurovision’s new voting rules following allegations of Israeli government ‘interference’?” Because apparently even Europe’s annual tune and tranny extravaganza now needs election observers.

Read more

 Trump signs bill to release Epstein files

Meanwhile, more concrete political influence is happening offstage. NBC News has highlighted the “close relationship” between Israeli secret services and the Iranian opposition in exile in Europe, also known as the MEK. The MEK’s biggest Western fans include Israel’s pep squad: Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo. Thanks to their efforts, the MEK is now off the US and EU terrorist list, allowing them to be queued up for the first string tug in any future Iranian regime change efforts.

Here’s what an actual attempt at independence looks like these days for Europe. Back in September, the EU announced that it was finally getting tough on Israel over Gaza. “Queen” Ursula von der Leyen strutted out acting like she’d just personally unplugged the Iron Dome. But then you check the numbers: six million euros cut here, fourteen million paused there. Brussels spends more than that on pastries and lanyards for conferences.

European officials acted like it was a seismic economic event. In reality, it was more like a breeze, with sanctions barely making a ripple. The major EU-Israel trade deal is still in place, but “under review,” which in bureaucrat-speak just means that they hope everyone’s forgotten it by now.

Israel’s response was to accuse the EU of falling for Hamas propaganda and overlooking Israeli humanitarian efforts in Gaza. That’s the diplomatic equivalent of saying, “Yes, I knocked down your house with a bulldozer, but I also watered your plants, so let’s not be too dramatic.”

A big song and dance worthy of a Eurovision entry. All a distraction from the fact that the EU’s main connection to Israel is weapons. Half of Israel’s total defense exports. Israeli defense giants like Elbit and Rafael even run factories inside Europe and recently won a contract to supply electronic warfare systems for new NATO frigates.

Read more

 Germany to lift arms export restrictions on Israel

So while EU officials brag about trimming a few symbolic programs, protesters across Europe have been targeting the real levers of foreign power at home: the weapons industry. Elbit in Germany has been vandalized and its subsidiaries picketed while officials blow off activists’ concerns like teenagers being told to clean their room.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz even recently announced a visit to Israel while lifting an arms embargo altogether. Nothing says moral outrage quite like trading in missiles.

So Queen Ursula can keep declaring that the EU is “pressuring” Israel. But as long as they keep signing weapons contracts, the pressure campaign has about the same impact as stapling a strongly worded memo to a tank.

While Epstein was trafficking young girls, he was part of an effort to export Israeli-linked military-grade systems to governments around the world – a once-submerged iceberg that’s now coming into fuller view. He actively worked to undermine anyone who dared suggest any such insidiousness, portraying them as conspiratorial crackpots worthy of cancellation and marginalization from polite society.

So who gets to actually ask the hard questions about all this, then? No one?

If everyone who does is written off as prejudiced, and the establishment and its corrupt self-interests get to decide what questions can be asked, then the only freedom and sovereignty left – from America to the EU and beyond – risks being the kind that’s reduced to a quaint museum display case.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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SOME SYRIAN DRUZE REQUEST ANNEXATION INTO ISRAEL - RT

 This artoc;e comes from RT, the Russian channel.  It contains surprising content.  If accurate, it will make the Druzes targets for other factions striving for power after the fall of Assad.  On the other hand, some Druzes already live inside Israel.  Hugh Murray

Syrian village asks to be annexed by Israel – media

An alleged member of the Druze community said it would be the “lesser evil,” fearing future jihadist rule after the fall of Bashar Assad

FILE PHOTO. Druze men © Getty Images / Hanan Isachar

The southern Syrian village of Hader has reportedly requested to be incorporated in the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights, according to the Times of Israel. The outlet cited an unverified video where a member of the Druze community expressed concerns over the future of his people.

Bashar Assad’s government fell last week after opposition forces, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists, launched a surprise offensive across Syria and took control of its major cities, including the capital Damascus. The erstwhile president has since resigned and sought asylum with his family in Russia.

In a video posted to X on Friday that features captions in English, a Hader resident claiming to be a representative of the Druze people, an esoteric ethnoreligious group, urged a large crowd to consider what their future will be like. The village is located within the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, which IDF troops entered last week.

“If we have to choose, we will choose the lesser evil,” he said. “And even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way,” the man added, apparently referring to the HTS, which was formerly known as the Al Nusra front - an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria.

Read more

 Israel orders troops to prepare for prolonged stay in Syria

“That evil might take our women, might take our daughters, they might take our houses,” he said, pleading for the Syrian Druze to be freed from the “injustice and oppression” that had been imposed on them in the past, and could be imposed again by Islamist rebel groups.

“We have asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity” the man, who claimed to speak on behalf of the Druze community across the surrounding area of Quneitra Governorate, said. “We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living [in Israel]. 

Around 48% of Syria’s Druze resided in the Suwayda Governorate some 90 kilometers from the border with Israel prior to the civil war, the Times of Israel reported citing a 2010 census. Since then, however, it is believed that many of them have fled the region for safer parts of the country.

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AMSTERDAM, MAKKABIS, 2-STATE SOLUTION v 40-STATE SOLUTION

  I see that the Dutch immigrants are celebrating Kristallnacht in Amsterdam.  Seems the Makkabi footballers are not up to their namesakes - they lost the match 5-0 to Ajax, and their fans lost to the mob of Jew haters.  Sickening shades of the Nazi occupation, replaced with the migrant occupation..

Of course, the real Makkabis of today are fighting in the Middle East, and winning.  Netanyahu has not yielded to the 2-state solution non-sense of Biden, Blinken, and  Nada heads.  Remember, many Democrats called for a 2-state solution in the US in 1864, and the result would have been a North of free states, and an independent Confederacy of slave states.  Would that have been a good solution?  It would have ended the Civil War somewhat earlier, but would that have been a good solution?

Instead of a 2-state solution of the Democrats, I would go back to earlier proposals.  There is only one Jewish nation in the world, and perhaps at least 40 Muslim nations.  If those 40 really cared about the Gazans and other Palestinian, invite them to their nations, open their borders to fellow Muslims!  If split 40 ways, it would not be a major burden for any one Muslim nation to take in some of the Muslim Palestinian refugees. BUT THEY DON'T WANT THAT.  THEY DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE AMONG THEIR OWN.

  The solution of the Palestinian leaders is stay, fight, kill - DEATH TO ISRAEL, DEATH TO AMERICA.  Start war after war, if need be lose, after loss, but eventually Israel will make a mistake.  Eventually, the Muslims will win.  Then, wipe out every Jew in the Middle East. And then prepare for the big fight against the big Satan, America.  God is great!

Happily, Israel under the leadership of Netanyahu, has avoided yielding to Biden and his 2-state cease fire policy of appeasement to the Palestinians.  And now enter Trump!  What happens now?  We shall see.----Hugh Murray

YOUNG AMERICANS, NEW VIEWS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, OPPRESSION AND WHO THE OPPRESSORS ARE

                       by HUGH MURRAY

 Since October 7, many liberal academics and others have been surprised by the reaction of many of the young in the West to events in the Middle East.  Indeed, some have been shocked.  At Cooper Union, where Pres. Lincoln had spoken after being elected to national office, Jewish students now had to hide as crowds of students and others were demanding both anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish policies.  And the slogan - From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free, is really a call to abolish Israel, and in some minds either expel all the Israelis, or kill all the Jews. genocide.  The university presidents of Harvard, M.I.T., and U. of Pennsylvania were questioned about such similar demos on their campuses, and their answers so dissatisfied Congressional representatives, and even more wealthy donors to the universities, that there were demands that all 3 resign.

     But it was not only in academia.  On the streets of many large cities, pro-Palestinian demos stopped traffic, engaged in fights with Jews, demanded a change in US and Western foreign policies, beginning with a cease fire in Gaza.

     What happened?  One noted, that Jews have just discovered that the Left Wing now considers them to be whites.  And according to the post-civil rights era doctrines, all whites are racists and oppressors.  People of color, by definition, cannot be racists, while only a few collaborator's with the conservatives can be oppressors.  Confusing the debates, the word anti-Semitism, which might refer to a people and a language group.  Various Middle Eastern people spoke a similar language, like Arabic, Hebrew, Coptic, ancient Egyptian, and others.  During the 1930s, when it became an issue, Persian changed its name to Iran to indicate that it was not Semitic but Aryan.  Since both the Muslim and Jewish people of the Middle East speak Semitic languages, it makes little sense to speak of a Palestinian calling a Jew a bad name and labeling the one shouting as anti-Semitic.  He may be anti-Israeli, and/or anti-Jewish, but he is not anti-Semitic as he himself is a Semite.

     It is a surprise to see the spread of the intense hostility to Israel, but it follows years of political correctness taught in schools.  Now called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the new formula openly rejects the old civil rights call for equality.  They reject equality and demand equity, which means, favoritism to help the oppressed and harm the oppressor.  And in this scheme all whites are oppressors, and lately many Asians are also now part of the oppressor groups, while most people of color (you are not allowed to say colored people, that is a term of the distant past).  So Jews, like some Asians, have been moved by the new ideologues from the category of the oppressed to that of the oppressor.  And the oppressors must be silenced first, and later, other measures.  Free speech on campus means the Left can say anything, including talk of genoside for the oppressors.  Suddenly Jews and some Asians have fallen out of grace, out of the category of the oppressed.  They are now to be chastised like the other oppressors, like the whites.  The new reality is that even in Australia a major carol sing can be interrupted by Palestinian activists.  And a month prior, signs appeared by the famous operal house, "Gas the Jews."

       We should be shocked by the horrors of this ideology, as it now applies to Jews and some Asians.  And especially how it has been used against white people for decades.  But the Palestinian cause is not new, and it has already changed American history.

     On a summer day a few decades ago a well-dressed gentleman exited a California hotel, somewhat agitated, as he spoke to a tv newsman, "I don't understand, he said he did it for his country!  How could he say such a thing?"  The man nodding his head in disbelief at what he had just heard.  He had just listened to what the young man said who had shot and killed Democratic Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.  The man being interviewed, clearly a Democratic activist, could not believe what he heard, that the assassin killed Kennedy for his country.  What the man did not understand was that Sirhan Sirhan was not born in the US.  He was born in Palestine.  And he did it for his country, by his own thinking.  He was not Muslim, but Christian.  Sirhan was Palestinian.

     If Sirhan were released from jail, he would be a great hero in the Middle East,  And he dud change the US,  When Kennedy defeated Sen. McCarthy in the California primary, he might have won the Democratic nomination, and then the presidency.  Think of how that might have changed America and the world!

     And with our open borders today, how many more Sirhans is Biden encouraging to come to America?  Will any of them change America the way Sirhan did??

     

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ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST

While many protests in major cities condemn the recent Palestinian attack on Israel.  And in Paris, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, New York City, and elsewhere others praise the Palestinians, argue that the Israelis got what they deserved during the kidnappings, stabbings, shootings, etc.  I was shocked to learn that the Sydney, Australia Opera House recently hosted a "Gas the Jews" rally, and some of the protestors, when interviewed, openly declare, that if they hear someone express certain views about the Middle East or the Koran, "they will kill them,"  A few days ago a teacher in northern France was murdered by a Muslim terrorist, and Saturday, a main train station was closed as was the Louvre.  Needless to say, Jewish schools and synagogues are increasing vigilence, as Hamas called for a day of Jihad to begin.

The protests in American cities include Muslims, and also anti-war leftists, some left Democrats or Democratic Socialists.  Below, I include ar article from a recent issue of the Militant, a Trotskyist newspaper in the US about an interview with Cuba's Fidel Castro by Jeffrey Goldberg, whom I assume is the same writer who today is often on America's National Public Radio to "balance" its pro-Democratic Party spins.  Goldberg is a Never Trumper type Republican.  The interview is not from last week, obviously, but the message is important.

 

Fidel Castro: ‘Without doubt, Israel has right to exist’

BY SETH GALINSKY

Vol. 87/No. 39

October 23, 2023

ESTUDIOS REVOLUCIÓN“Nothing compares to the Holocaust,” Fidel Castro told Jeffrey Goldberg in 2010 interview. Castro, left, with Goldberg, right, and Jewish community leader Adela Dworin in Havana, August 2010.

Since the pogrom by Hamas and its allies, Stalinists and middle-class radicals have been organizing actions under the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” — a call for the destruction of Israel and slaughter of the Jews. That’s the exact opposite of what Fidel Castro, the central leader of the Cuban Revolution, had to say about Israel and Jew-hatred.

Castro often strongly disagreed with the Israeli government. At the same time he openly expressed his support for the right of Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jews.

In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him.

Fidel told him the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the “unique” history of antisemitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.

“I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”

“Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms,” Castro said. “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.”

“Let’s imagine that I were [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Castro said, “I would remember the 6 million Jewish men and women, of all ages who were exterminated in the concentration camps” when making decisions.

Goldberg asked Castro, “Do you think the State of Israel, as a Jewish State, has a right to exist?”

“Yes, without a doubt,” Castro replied.

“True revolutionaries never threaten to exterminate a whole country,” Castro had told Le Monde in September 1967, in response to Arab governments and others calling for Israel’s destruction.

Pat Buchanan on Subversion by NGOs

Pat Buchanan has another most interesting article posted on vdare.  Non-Governmental Organizations have rightly drawn the suspicion of various nations.  In the US, millionaire George Soros has funded numerous left-wing groups, as have once respectable foundations (see the book by Horowitz on his expose of the Ford Foundation and others with names implying they are above controversy).  Some NGOs do improve conditions; some are just political action groups to mobilize unofficial militias.  Buchanan recounts reasons to be skeptical of the NGOs.----Hugh Murray

NGOs As Agents of Subversion: Not Only In Israel, But Egypt And The Caucasus As Well

By Patrick J. Buchanan on March 23, 2015, 6:08 pm

See, earlier, Are Freedom House And The National Democratic Institute Really “Our Innocents Abroad”?

Though “Bibi” Netanyahu won re-election last week, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will still look into whether the State Department financed a clandestine effort to defeat him.

Reportedly, State funneled $350,000 to an American NGO called OneVoice, which has an Israeli subsidiary, Victory 15, that collaborated with U.S. operatives to bring Bibi down.

If we are now secretly pumping cash into the free elections of friendly countries, to dump leaders President Obama dislikes, Americans have a right to know why we are using Cold War tacticsagainst democracies.

After World War II, my late colleague on CNN’s “Crossfire,” Tom Braden, delivered CIA cash to democratic parties in Europe imperiled by communist parties financed from Moscow.

But that was done to combat Stalinism when Western survival was at stake in a Cold War that ended in 1991.

Hopefully, after looking into OneVoice and V15, the Senate will expand its investigation into a larger question: Is the U.S. using NGOs to subvert regimes around the world? And, if so, who decides which regimes may be subverted?

What gives these questions urgency is the current crisis that has Moscow moving missiles toward Europe and sending submarines and bombers to probe NATO defenses.

America contends that Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and backing for pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine is the cause of the gathering storm in Russian-NATO relations.

Yet Putin’s actions in Ukraine were not taken until the overthrow of a democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev, in a coup d’etat in which, Moscow contends, an American hand was clearly visible.

Not only was John McCain in Kiev’s Maidan Square egging on the crowds that drove the regime from power, so, too, was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

In an intercepted phone call with our ambassador in Kiev, Nuland identified the man we preferred when President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. “Yats,” she called him. And when Yanukovych fled after the Maidan massacre, sure enough, Arseniy Yatsenyuk was in power.

Nuland also revealed that the U.S. had spent $5 billion since 1991 to bring about the reorientation of Ukraine toward the West.

Now, bringing Ukraine into the EU and NATO may appear to Nuland & Co. a great leap forward for freedom and progress.

But to Russia it looks like the subversion of a Slavic nation with which she has had intimate ties for centuries, to bring Ukraine into an economic union and military alliance directed against Moscow.

And if NATO stumbles into a military clash with Russia, the roots of that conflict will be traceable to the coup in Kiev that Russians believe was the dirty work of the Americans.

If the U.S. had a role in that coup, the American people should know it and the Senate should find out whether Nuland & Co. used NGOs to reignite a Cold War that Ronald Reagan brought to an end.

And if we are now using NGOs as fronts for secret operations to dump over regimes, we are putting all NGOs abroad under suspicion and at risk.

Not in our lifetimes has America been more distrusted and disliked. And among the reasons is that we are seen as constantly carpingat governments that do not measure up to our standards of democracy, and endlessly interfering in the internal affairs of nations that do not threaten us.

In this new era, U.S. foreign policy elites have boasted of the “color-coded” revolutions they helped to foment in Belgrade, Kiev, Tbilisi. In 2003, we helped to overthrow the Georgian regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in a “Rose Revolution” that brought to power Mikheil Saakashvili. And Saakashvili nearly dragged us into a confrontation with Russia in 2008, when he invaded South Ossetiaand killed Russian peacekeepers.

What vital interest of ours was there in that little nation in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin, to justify so great a risk?

Nor is it Moscow alone that is angered over U.S. interference in its internal affairs and those of its neighbor nations.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt has expelled members of U.S. NGOs. Beijing believes U.S. NGOs were behind the Occupy-Wall-Street-style street blockages in Hong Kong.

If true, these U.S. actions raise a fundamental question:

What is the preeminent goal of U.S. foreign policy?

Is it to protect the vital interests and national security of the Republic? Or do we believe with George W. Bush that, “The survival of liberty” in America “depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”

If it is the latter, then our mission is utopian–and unending.

For if we believe our liberty is insecure until the whole world is democratic, then we cannot rest until we witness the overthrow of the existing regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Belarus, most of the Arab and African nations, as well as Venezuela and Cuba.

And if that is our goal, our Republic will die trying to achieve it.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.