Celebratory gunfire in Kabul by Taliban coincided with exit of last of US troops from Afghanistan, putting an end to twenty year long war in Afghanistan. On Monday night the last US military aircraft took off from Kabul airport. Two weeks earlier the Taliban insurgent group had seized control of the capital city of Kabul, toppling the internationally recognized Afghani government and President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country. The swift rise of Taliban to power took everyone by surprise, including Taliban leadership and US, that had clearly mis-anticipated the timeline before setting troops withdrawal deadline in a hasty fashion.

US announced its complete exit just before midnight, local time, but sans any official handover. Taliban spokesperson Qari Yusuf said in statement, “The last US soldier has left Kabul airport and our country gained complete independence.”

The new rulers of Afghanistan hailed their return to power after 20 years after the first Taliban regime was ousted by US invasion in 2001. The Kabul sky was lit with gunfire by rejoicing Taliban fighters.

“The last five aircraft have left, it’s over!” said Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul’s international airport. “I cannot express my happiness in words … Our 20 years of sacrifice worked.”

As soon as the last US military airplane took off in air, Taliban wasted no time in moving in and seizing control of the Kabul airport that was under US and foreign forces control while they attempted hurried evacuation of their citizens and Afghan citizens before August 31 deadline.

Videos show Taliban fighters entering the hangar and examining US military helicopters left behind along with the equipment. US has said it had disabled 73 aircrafts and 27 Humvees before leaving them behind. C-RAMS (Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System) were also made inoperable. Few equipment including two firetrucks, front end loaders and aircraft staircases were left behind by US military for Taliban to run the airport.

Mohammad Islam, a Taliban guard at the airport said, “After 20 years we have defeated the Americans. They have left and now our country is free.” He added, “t’s clear what we want. We want Shariah (Islamic law), peace and stability.”

As American efforts to evacuate troops and citizens from Afghanistan reaches a point of completion, US anti-missile defences are already at work defending attacks. At least five rockets were intercepted stopping them on their tracks, aiming at the Kabul airport.

Currently, America has evacuated about 114,400 people including foreign nationals and Afghans deemed at risk. Meanwhile, British forces have also been evacuated from Afghanistan and efforts are being made to protect the only remaining infrastructure to help people evacuate, if need be.

The onslaught of missiles and suicide bombs have been organized by ISIS who have taken complete responsibility of the attacks. According to Afghan media, the recent missile attacks were initiated from the back of a vehicle. Several other missiles struck various parts of the Afghan capital.

These attacks are going unabated. But later on, a US drone strike was initiated to bring down a suicide car bomber who Pentagon officials said had been preparing to attack the airport on behalf of the ISIS-K, a local affiliate of the Islamic State. It is both enemy of Taliban and the West.

Drone attack led to casualties which has been criticized by Taliban as American unlawful.  America will continue to evacuate as many as possible till the deadline of August 31. Canada and Germany have already ended their evacuation efforts each clearing each 4000 plus citizens and Afghanis. However, about 300 German citizens remain in Afghanistan, a spokesman for the foreign office in Berlin shared with the media.

Other countries that have already finished and closed their evacuation efforts include Ireland, Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Ukraine, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, UAE, Qatar, India, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. Some definitely remain and might have to wait for longer before any of countries decide to take the bull by its horns, again.

Peru’s competing presidential candidates rightwinger Keiko Fujimori and socialist Pedro Castillo have resorted to the streets after the closely contested 6 June election

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Almost as soon as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic in March, contact tracing apps seem to have sprouted everywhere. Last May, MintPress News reported on a Bluetooth-enabled sports fans tracking app, which was later repurposed to push COVID-19 contact tracing methods. The app, called Care19, was one of the first publicly known implementations of a device-neutral, Android-iOS framework made possible by a noteworthy partnership between Apple and Google.

That same Apple-Google framework underpins another virtually identical app that had managed to fly under the radar of privacy advocates despite being the very first contact tracing app released, predating North Dakota’s Care19 by two months and developed by an MIT Media Lab spinoff called the PathCheck Foundation.

PathCheck is set to be rolled out to the public in Minnesota through the COVIDaware MN program, which will look to bring adoption of the “exposure notification solution” to critical mass, in line with the goal set by PathCheck’s makers since the app was first released in early March 2020. High adoption rates would be “pretty much the only way this app will be able to make a surmountable difference,” according to researchers interviewed by Popular Mechanics in a March piece on PathCheck.

The foundation claims to have already deployed its app in several countries worldwide and many U.S. states and territories, including Guam. The campaign underway in Minnesota will test newer approaches to overcome the failures of Care19 in North Dakota, which only managed to rake together a paltry 5% adoption rate due to heavy public resistance surrounding privacy concerns.

One of the ways PathCheck intends to close the gap in public trust is by anonymizing the data being transferred through novel encryption features. “COVIDaware neither collects nor distributes personal identification,” according to the Star Tribune. But other aspects could make the data privacy issue a moot point.

For instance, the app will be tethered to local and state health institutions, which will send “codes” to users in order to “prevent false reports” and keep contact tracing entities abreast of a user’s COVID-19 status. Privacy, in this case, only means that you won’t know which of your friends, acquaintances, or enemies, stuck the health patrol on you.

The Path from here

PathCheck’s plan “is to build on the technology, programs, and standards we’re developing today for pandemic response to create a global system for public health,” per its website, which describes the “wide array” of technologies being lined up to “enable the development of new diagnostics and treatments that result in a healthier world.”

The app is open-source offering full transparency for developers and others to verify the processes and PathCheck has positioned itself as a champion of privacy from its inception. In a paper called Apps Gone Rouge, PathCheck calls on experts to offer advice on how to overcome the public’s hesitance when it comes to contact tracing apps. The foundation has also been pushing for a “national coordination” program to bring all contact tracing apps under a single roof within the federal government.

PathCheck brings 1984-esque levels of tracking and surveillance only possible in a post-Covid era

The marketing slush that pervades PathCheck’s site includes terms like “customers” for potential hospital patients or banal promises of “driving innovation for a better world” to describe their products and services, as well as grandiose pronouncements and predictions such as asserting it “will be the global leader in advancing public health with technology,” while practically gushing over the idea that COVID-19 has “forever change[d] the role of public health.”

If anything has changed, it might be the intensity with which mass self-surveillance technologies have been coming at us since March. Leveraging the pandemic to come out on top in the “new normal” is just another market opportunity for the majority of startups venturing into the space. As a nonprofit, PathCheck assumes the role of benevolent steward for the multiple contact tracing apps, which like the Apple-Google framework tested at that same MIT Media Lab where PathCheck was born, augurs a Trojan horse for the eventual consolidation of all digital pipelines.

A digital malaise

Ramesh Raskar, founder and chairman of PathCheck, has been working with Apple, Facebook, and Google on computational privacy and health for years in so-called “Special Projects” as posted on his Linked In page. One such project commissioned by Facebook centered around “digital health,” which Wikipedia defines as “the convergence of digital technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery.”

It was as part of this project that Raskar co-wrote a paper for the Bluetooth tracking technology used in the PathCheck app and others. In the study’s executive summary, the authors describe the potential application of the technology in epidemics “such as COVID-19 through improved contact-tracing, better privacy and verification for sensitive data sharing in the numerous Bluetooth and GPS based mobile applications.”

Apart from sitting as chairman of PathCheck Foundation, Raskar is an Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab and counts a three-year stint at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a member of its Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group.

He also sits on the commission of a Swiss AI healthcare foundation, which “champions the use of AI and digital technology to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people” (marketing speak for an encroaching global surveillance state) that funds and scales up AI projects in the healthcare space under the guise of “health equity”.

Sponsored by major U.S. technology contractor Cisco, the PathCheck team includes many people who have been involved in the collecting of health data for years. PathCheck CEO Adam Barrey founded a company that developed management systems for human genomic data, as well as AI technologies to interpret such data in order to deliver “precision medicine.”

But at the head of their “global implementation” strategy is Khahlil Louisy, a very recent graduate student of MIT whose previous background in digital media and minority groups mentorship programs make him the perfect face for the worldwide rollout of a 24/7 surveillance/tracking standard to go hand in hand with a COVID-19 vaccine that is slated to target people that look more like him than his CEO.

PathCheck’s ‘vision’ includes building “a new generation of digital solutions for public health [to drive] mass adoption of a foundational… platform that includes mobile touch points on every smartphone in the world.” The organization also suggests that “population scale health strategies” will become the norm in the post-COVID world – a proposition that should scare every oppressed minority group anywhere.

Feature photo | A woman wearing a face mask to protect against coronavirus, holds a smart phone as she leaves a subway in Moscow, Russia, Oct. 19, 2020. Alexander Zemlianichenko | AP

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

The post A Trojan Horse? PathCheck’s Contact Tracing App Coming to Minnesota and the World appeared first on MintPress News.

Peaceful activism for Palestinian rights on college campuses and elsewhere has long been targeted heavily by nationalist groups like Hasbara Fellowships, Hillel, and others who present Israel as a fun, wonder-filled beacon of democracy and haven for Jewish people while feeding into islamophobic and anti-Arab sentiments.

We see this in the continued attempts to brand Muslim and Arab students as inherently “violent” or supporting terrorism. Students who support Israel are presented as fearful of attacks and vulnerable while in fact, those who highlight Palestinian rights face harassment and defamation campaigns that follow them for the rest of their academic and professional careers.

Most, if not all, speakers who are invited to speak on campus on the issue of Palestine have experienced the hateful, vicious attacks by Zionist groups who campaign to silence the Palestinian voice. Granted, some experience this more and some less, but the Zionist reach seems to have no boundaries and they are more vigilant and hateful than ever before.

This is true everywhere, but perhaps nowhere more than on university campuses. As an event is planned, and sometimes immediately after an event, Zionist organizations express their displeasure to university authorities in an attempt to either cancel an event altogether or, if the event had already taken place, to demand an apology or urge authorities to reprimand the organizers for allowing what they refer to as an “anti-semitic” voice to be heard on campus.

The time has come to change this dynamic. Rather than wait for the attacks by Zionist groups and then explain and apologize, those who stand for justice in Palestine would do well to expose Zionist groups and the hateful racism which they represent.

Hasbara

Zionist groups represent a racist, supremacist, and violent ideology. They defend a state that is engaged in the worst type of violence against the Palestinian people, yet they feel that they are in a position to question the motives of organizers, speakers, and activists who call for justice and tolerance.

Hillel, for example, writes on its website, that “Israel is at the heart of Hillel’s work.” They fully admit that their goal is “to inspire every Jewish college student to develop a meaningful and enduring relationship to Israel.” They want every Jewish student to have a “meaningful” relationship with Israel, which has from its very inception destroyed, stolen, killed, and imposed a violent racist regime in Palestine.

Hillel further says that “Engaged and educated students can become committed Jewish adults who are passionate supporters of Israel.” One has to wonder what kind of hate-filled indoctrination must be used in order to cultivate “passionate” support for an apartheid state.

My most recent experience was with a Candian Zionist organization called Hasbara Fellowships. On their website, Hasbara Fellowships write, “We envision North American college campuses to be a place where Zionists feel empowered to openly celebrate the Jewish State without fear or exclusion.” How is one empowered to celebrate a state that keeps millions of people under its control, deprived of water and food, and determines who has access to medical care based on whether or not they are Jewish?

As for the misleading use of the name “Jewish State,” the majority of Jewish people around the world choose not to live in Israel. The majority of the population governed by the State of Israel are not Jewish, but Palestinian Muslims and Christians who are subjected to systemic racism and violence. How then is Israel a “Jewish” state?

Furthermore, this so-called Jewish State has been denounced by Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis and secular Jews alike for over 100 years. Zionism never represented Jews or Jewish identity, or for that matter, Jewish self-determination.

Hasbara Fellowships further states that it is, “a leading pro-Israel campus activism organization.” On the face of it, to some readers, this may seem benign, but to anyone familiar with the history of the Middle East, and that of Palestine in particular, this is indeed sinister. “Pro-Israel” means pro-violence and pro-apartheid. It means being pro a regime which has taken Palestine, and like wildfire, destroyed everything in its path.

Zionism embraces (and various Zionist groups promote) a racist, supremacist ideology that has brought death, homelessness, and destruction to millions of Palestinians. And yet, it is the wonderful, selfless work being done by student groups like PSC and SPHR in Canada, SJP, and SUPER in the United States, that is being attacked and defamed.

All around the world, students toil day in and day out to get the truth regarding Palestine out into the open. Yet, the Zionist organizations which promote hatred, racism, and violence are being given the ear of university administrations and the intentions of the Palestine solidarity student groups are brought into question.

Set the record straight

In their demands to reprimand the organizers of a recent event in which I participated, albeit remotely, Hasbara Fellowships called me a “fringe member” of the Jewish community. Never mind that this ignores my upbringing in Israeli society, which gave me an invaluable intimate insight, it undermines the opinions of countless Jews around the world who similarly do not subscribe to a nationalist ideology.

These Jewish groups range from the large-scale ultraorthodox Hassidic communities (a great many of whom are the descendants of Holocaust survivors) who put religious observance before nationalism and flat-out reject the State of Israel, to the many secular Jews who have a long tradition of peaceful activism resisting oppressive regimes. Quite often inspired by their own experiences of oppression, these Jewish groups, individuals, and communities stand up for the human rights of others. Nationalist groups such as Hillel and Hasbara Fellowships do not speak for these Jewish people, as they demand to feel “empowered” to spew hate and racism.

The state of Israel became rich as a result of the pillaging and looting of Palestinian property, both private and collective. This theft took place after countless Palestinians were forcibly exiled from their homes and their land. The Israeli economy is strong and Israel is not a state that is in need of foreign aid, or any aid for that matter. It is, however, in need of a great deal of public relations, and that is where these groups come in.

Israel peddles weapons and sells to the darkest dictatorships around the world, and Israel’s arms industry profits are in the billions. Historically, Israel supported Apartheid in South Africa, Mobuto in the Congo, Idi Amin in Uganda, the Shah of Iran, the genocidal attacks against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and military dictators in Latin America.

Still, university administrators have decided to bow their heads to racist, hate-filled Zionist groups rather than support the courageous students who stand for justice and freedom from bigotry everywhere. One hopes that the administrations of universities around the world will not let these attempts at defamation leveled by Israeli nationalist groups deter them from protecting freedom of speech and peaceful human rights advocacy at their universities.

However, rather than wait for others to do the right thing, we who support the causes of justice and liberation in Palestine need to act. We would do well to move from defense to offense, and clearly, there is a lot of material to work with.

Feature photo | Israeli peace activist and author Miko Peled speaks at the 2014 FOSNA conference. Photo | graceandsalaam | Flickr

Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

The post A “Fringe Member” of the Jewish Community: How Hasbara Trolls Reacted to My Campus Appearance appeared first on MintPress News.

Condemnation after award-winning Syrian photojournalist Ameer Alhalbi wounded during Paris protest https://t.co/G5yua9jRat pic.twitter.com/itGHJUwgRH

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 29, 2020

Perhaps even more concerning is that new laws pushed through by the government of Emmanuel Macron and passed by France’s National Assembly (akin to the U.S. House of Representatives) mean that sharing images of Alhalbi or other victims of police brutality might soon be considered illegal.

Article 24 of the country’s new national security bill, which now only needs to be ratified by the Senate, specifically outlaws the publishing and dissemination of images of police that undermine their physical or psychological “integrity,” and is punishable with a fine of up to €45,000 and up to one year in jail. The bill specifically states that filming police in such a manner would be against the law, but questions have been raised about how liberally authorities would interpret the nebulous language of the new edict. Media unions and human rights groups warn that it could prevent journalists from documenting police abuses.

The National Assembly’s decision to approve the law last week sparked large protests in many major cities around France, including Bordeaux, Lille, Montpellier, and Nantes. However, an incident caught on camera on Saturday threw large amounts of fuel on the fire of resentment, drastically increasing the demonstrations’ size and intensity.

Images from mobile phones and closed-circuit television showed an unprovoked police attack on a young black music producer at his place of work. A group of four officers can be seen chasing after Michel Zecler, following him from outside into his studio, where they kick, punch and beat him with truncheons. Zecler also alleges they shouted racial abuse while they assailed him.

Three Paris officers are being held over for the beating of music producer, Michel Zecler. They will remain in custody for now.
“Judicial authorities wanted to make sure that the officers didnt have contact with one another and they couldn’t exert any https://t.co/L9cJT0Bdgj

— PMUnited News (@PmunitedN) November 30, 2020

Before the videos went viral on social media, the officers testified that Zecler had, in fact, attacked them, and was resisting arrest. The officers have now been charged with “deliberate violence” and with “falsifying statements.” Two of the gang of four, including a 44-year-old senior officer with the rank of brigadier, remain in custody, while two others have been released.

The viral images provoked a storm of condemnation across the country this weekend, and propelled as many as 500,000 people into the streets, with demonstrations in dozens of cities. Protestors marched through the streets, setting light to cars, damaging buildings, and clashing with police, of whom a reported 98 were injured nationwide. Many of Paris’ iconic boulevards resembled a war zone as thousands of demonstrators pitched battle with lines of police in riot gear.

President Macron said he was “very shocked” by the footage of the police attack on Zecler, yet continues to be a driving force behind the new security law, under which many have noted that the images might never have come to light, given as they essentially identify the Parisien officers and clearly undermine their integrity or authority. Without the footage, it is possible that Zecler would have been facing prosecution himself.

Protests against a new bill in France that restricts filming police grew stronger this week after a video emerged of police racially abusing and beating a Black man. pic.twitter.com/2UPNdOQQSh

— DW News (@dwnews) November 30, 2020

Although the bill and the protests against it are dominating French politics, the story has been covered sparsely in the American corporate press, with no coverage whatsoever in MSNBC, CBS News, or CNBC. Fox News, meanwhile, reprinted one Associated Press article, featuring an egregious, uncorrected error in its subheadline, asserting that protestors were shooting tear gas at themselves.

While foreign desks have been seriously cut in recent years, huge demonstrations in central Paris should not have been too difficult to cover. Lebanese political commentator Sarah Abdallah suggested that if the rallies had been happening in countries antagonistic to the United States, they would have been front-page news. Certainly, similar protests in Iran and Hong Kong dominated the news cycles last year, prompting constant reaction from Mike Pompeo. The Secretary of State is yet to comment on the events in France, suggesting that they are not at the front and center of his thoughts.

President Macron came to power in 2017, winning in the final round of the election against far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. A strong believer in neoliberalism and an admirer of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he has insisted that France must not merely be reformed, but transformed, and has attempted to radically alter the shape of French society, away from a social democratic model to one more resembling the United States. Almost immediately after gaining the presidency, however, his average approval rating tumbled and has not risen above 40% since.

Indeed, the 42-year-old former investment banker has faced almost constant resistance to his agenda from the general public. His attempts to increase the cost of fuel in 2018 sparked the Yellow Vest movement across the country. Meanwhile, his plans to raise the age of retirement and reform France’s pension system was met with a months-long general strike that paralyzed the country last winter. Despite losing over 50,000 people to the coronavirus pandemic, he has seen his popularity increase this year due to the government’s financial response to the virus, which included aid to small businesses and paying employees to stay home. Despite this, it appears possible that France might be headed for its own “George Floyd” moment, where its racial injustices are finally reckoned with.

Feature photo | Assa Traore, center, sister of Adama Traore attends a demonstration against a security law that would restrict sharing images of police, Nov. 28, 2020 in Paris. Francois Mori | AP

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

The post France’s New Security Law May Have Just Sparked a “George Floyd” Moment appeared first on MintPress News.

One of the many gems that exist in the city of London is a unique bookstore by the name of Jarndyce Booksellers. Jarndyce specializes in first editions, rare books, and wonderful collectors’ editions of the complete works of Shakespeare, Dickens, and countless others. Also displayed in the store are enormous antique illustrated copies of the Bible. These mammoth books are beautifully adorned with illustrations that bring Biblical characters and stories to life.

I remember sitting as a child, leafing through an old, illustrated copy of a Bible that was part of my father’s book collection. It too had wonderful illustrations, and I would sit there and look at the pictures of the great men and women, and experience the great moments that are described in the Bible. The angel who stopped Abraham as he was about to sacrifice his son; Moses coming down from Mount Sinai; the young David slaying the giant Goliath, and so many more. They all came alive in front of my very eyes and it was as clear to me as a child as it is today and to so many others, that those stories describe real historic events.

These lovely renditions were intended to create the impression that the Bible tells stories that are historically true. They lead readers and even those who do not read but hear the stories and look at the illustrations, to believe that these were real people and real events that took place.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks at the opening of an “ancient road” that cuts into the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. Tsafrir Abayov | AP

It is easy enough to point to an ancient city in Palestine, say Bethlehem or Jerusalem or some corner of the desert near Bi’r Saba, and claim that a particular Biblical event took place there. This literal reading of the Bible, and particularly of the Old Testament, has given and continues to give Zionism enormous impetus.

Zionists rely on millions of people across the world who have been misled to believe that there is historical truth to the Bible, who think that today’s Israel is the true and rightful successor of Biblical Israel and who allow Zionists to claim the Bible as their actual history book.

Mythology religion and history

The Greeks and the Nordic people replaced their ancient indigenous mythologies with Christianity, retaining their mythology as a part of their cultural history. In India, ancient mythology is very much alive and ancient gods are still worshiped in temples throughout the country, yet that is never confused with India’s actual history. Vishnu is never confused with Ashoka or Buddha with Akbar. Each has its respective place within the rich Indian culture.

Neither the people of Greece, the Nordic people, or even those who practice various faiths in India regard their mythology as history. You will not find Greek archeologists digging to find the home of Zeus. There are no signs that the Nordic people are searching for the ancient city where Odin and Thor resided, and even in India, where the ancient gods are very much part of life, there is no expectation that the city of Shiva will be dug up by archeologists.

This is because the separation between myth and religion and history is clear, except in the case of Zionism. Zionists, both Christian and Jewish, firmly hold to their demand that the Bible is history. Archeologists working in the name of Zionists have been digging up Palestine for two centuries, often ignoring or even destroying valuable artifacts that do not serve their purpose.

This is because Zionist archeologists are motivated not by scientific curiosity, but by a political agenda. They ignore the wealth of history and archeology that exist in Palestine and search for proof of their own theories.

Destruction of monuments

The need to validate Zionist claims that connect current day Israel with the ancient Hebrews and the glorified mythology as it is presented in parts of the Old Testament often comes at the expense of important historical sites and monuments. In fact, is not uncommon to see invaluable historical sites destroyed by design at the hands of Zionist institutions.

The Mamilla Cemetery is one such example. It is an ancient Muslim burial ground and holy site in the center of Jerusalem believed to date back to the seventh century. Numerous saints of the Sufi faith and thousands of officials, scholars, notables, and Jerusalem families have been buried in the cemetery over the past 1,000 years.

Companions of the Prophet Muhammad were said to be buried there, but since the Zionist conquest of West Jerusalem, the cemetery has fallen into disrepair, with ancient tombstones destroyed and desecrated. Over the last decade, a significant portion of the cemetery has been razed and human remains have been desecrated so that the Simon Wiesenthal Center can build a facility, shamelessly called the Museum of Tolerance.

The Mamilla Cemetery, shown here in a 1951 aerial photo, sat undistributed for centuries until the Israeli government paved the way for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance atop its historic ruins

Since 2010, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Cemetery have worked to halt the construction of the new facility and preserve what remains of the ancient site. To this end, petitions have been filed with various UN bodies, including UNESCO, to protect the sacred site.

The “Museum of Tolerance,” as it is called, has resulted in the disinterment of hundreds of graves, and the whereabouts of the countless human remains that have been disposed of are unknown. Recognized as one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries in the world, where seventy thousand warriors of Saladin’s armies are interred, is now all but gone.

Bab al-Rahmeh is yet another famous Islamic cemetery in Jerusalem. It extends from Lions Gate to the end of the wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque near the Umayyad palaces in the south. The Israeli government is in the process of confiscating parts of the cemetery to implement a settlement project. Plans include creating, “paths of biblical gardens,” once again erasing historical sites in order to build monuments to commemorate a history that never was.

Another classic example of the destruction of real history for the sake of mythology is the opening of the so-called “Temple’s Baptism station” on the historic land of the Umayyad palaces in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Temple in question is the Jewish Temple and the Umayyad palaces on which it is to be built date back nearly 1,400 years, built in the early stage of the Islamic period, and used to house the Islamic Caliphs and institutions that managed the affairs of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Monuments in disrepair

Zionist authorities have not only destroyed precious historical sites in search of mythical ones, they have also allowed invaluable historical sites to fall into disrepair. There are countless such sites throughout Palestine, such as the mosque of Dhaher Al-Umar in Tabariya, which now stands alone, in ruins, a solitary witness to the glorious Arab past of the city.

Daher al-Umar was a Palestinian leader who ruled most of Palestine and shaped its history throughout the entire 18th century. Not only has his memory been erased, but the monuments that carry his name and still exist now lay in ruins.

The mythology of the Old Testament was turned into history through a successful attempt to make the stories and the figures in these stories, mythical as they may have been, into actual historical events and figures. At the same time, the real history of Palestine, a glorious history of culture and religion, politics, commerce, and unmatched art and architecture, has all but been lost so that Zionists can claim that they are the true successors of Joshua and King David.

There is no harm in enjoying the wonderful illustrations that adorn the Bible, the likes of which one finds at Jarndyce Bookseller. In fact, I intend to continue to visit that store whenever I can and enjoy those wonderful renditions of Old and the New Testament stories. However, we must be careful not to confuse those stories and the illustrations with the actual history of Palestine.

Author’s note | Readers in search of an accurate history of Palestine can check out Nur Maslaha’s book, “Palestine, A Four Thousand Year History.”

Feature photo | An Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist walks through what Israeli authorities say is a 2,000-year-old drainage tunnel leading to Jerusalem’s Old City. Dan Balilty | AP

Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

The post From Myth to Reality: Zionist Archeologists Are Using the Bible to Rewrite History appeared first on MintPress News.

The metaphors they leaned on to describe these new Western values and systems were accurate, despite having nothing comparable in their own cosmology or parallels in their relationship with the earth. In one of the most striking prophecies, the interpreting shaman warns of the days of “the golden club,” subtly alluding to the new paradigm of wealth and commercial imperatives being imposed on their world.

Over six centuries later, the golden club era has become an epoch. The United States holds the biggest gold stick of them all and today, the descendants of the Maya and other ancestral victims of its inexorable advance find themselves at a potential tipping point, which may finally bring this historical aberration we now call capitalism to its natural end.

With human labor being swapped out for robots and algorithms in our modern-day world, the empire of commerce built over the last five centuries is quickly reaching complete self-sufficiency and discarding any excess human component. This includes the banking and financial sectors, which in some ways, is far ahead of the game.

Money or wealth no longer exclusively requires human labor to generate. The art of creating money out of nothing has been perfected by the financial sector, which has innumerable tools at its disposal to produce enormous wealth in a blink of an eye. An illusion that is kept alive only because they have a limitless pool of taxpayer money to hedge their often risky bets.

The United States Treasury Department keeps a stash of that taxpayer money and uses it for currency speculation. The massive profits from the secret market activities can be used for things like funding foreign governments and many other applications at the discretion of the presiding administration. This slush fund was the central funding vehicle for the multiple economic relief facilities enacted in the CARES Act and is operated by the Federal Reserve on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Department.

The spigot from the money machine was opened briefly for the general public through the emergency legislation. But, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is getting ready to cut it off even as he opens it even further for Wall Street.

The homeless armies

By January 2021, renters in America will owe $34 billion to their landlords, according to global investment bank and advisory firm, Stout. More than half of the eviction moratoriums enacted to avoid an upsurge in homelessness during Covid lockdowns have been rescinded, including a federal moratorium that expired in July.

Rent and landlord relief programs across the country take up the lion’s share of CARES Act funding allocations, with states like Virginia having already spent over 38% of the money reserved for renters by early November. As the money runs out and the December 31 CARES Act cutoff date approaches, states are fumbling to keep enough cash in their coffers to stem the tidal wave evictions that are at the doorstep and leaking through profusely.

Cases like that of Ricky Johnson, as reported by The Virginian-Pilot, are happening nationwide and show how landlords are getting around moratorium rules and successfully evicting tenants over technicalities and dubious legal maneuvers. It was only through the efforts of a staunch group of friends and housing advocates, that Johnson was able to avoid ending up on the streets with his brother.

With their help, the Johnson brothers convinced a judge to vacate a previous order awarding possession of the property to a management company and managed to extend their stay of execution a paltry few weeks into next year. But, in the rapacious economic climate that characterizes the American real estate market, three months rent free can feel like a gift from the gods.

The gods, in this scenario, is the Department of the Treasury and its current head, Steve Mnuchin, who has formally asked that all but four credit facility programs created by the department to disburse CARES Act funds return any unused monies by the end of 2020 so they can be integrated into the regular federal pipeline, including the $429 billion supposedly leftover from CARES Act. Mnuchin was deliberately misleading about where that money actually goes since it lays bare a massive slush fund called the exchange stabilization fund (ESF) at the heart of these enormous giveaways to the biggest, richest, and most ruthless banks.

Of the total 13 facilities created by Treasury, Secretary Mnuchin had asked to spare only those which pertain to financial institutions like Citigroup and a handful of usual suspects. In a formal letter to Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell in late November, Mnuchin instructed the Fed to extend four programs directed at helping Wall Street beyond December, while drawing the curtain down on the remaining facilities and preening about programs like the Main Street Lending Program and their supposed “success” in abating an economic downturn during the pandemic.

Mnuchin’s declaration of victory is at odds with the reality of people like Dana Imus, who lost her job as a forklift operator in March and hasn’t been able to get a job since. Her landlord simply refused to recognize the federal eviction moratorium issued by the CDC in October. Similar problems occur throughout the country as property owners circumvent the laws through intimidation and legislative loopholes to force tenants out.

Tawanda Mormon from Cleveland, Ohio, was thrust into a couch-surfing lifestyle when the 46-year old was hospitalized in August and fell behind on her $500-dollar rent. Despite the CDC moratorium, Mormon was evicted in October and has been staying with friends and family. In Missouri and North Carolina, judges refused to abide by the CDC’s notice and landlords across the nation have been fighting the order in court.

Among the loopholes being used to put people out of their homes that the CDC’s order only applies to nonpayment of rent, which allows landlords to bring an eviction case on virtually any other grounds, such as excessive noise or trash. In addition, the CDC made the process more onerous for tenants seeking to avail themselves of moratorium protections by giving landlords the “right to challenge the veracity” of their claims.

Where’s the ball?

Mnuchin’s request that four credit facilities for the financial sector be spared the December 31 deadline, while pulling the cord on all the relief programs for small businesses and regular Americans included in the CARES Act, feels like politics as an incoming Biden administration is set to use the coming housing crisis a springboard for sweeping legislative action as potentially millions of people start to fall through the cracks come January.

Meanwhile, big banks continue to receive their billion-dollar stipends from Uncle Sam without interruption. Two of the four programs Mnuchin wanted off the chopping block are zombies from the 2008 financial collapse.

The Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), which targets large banking institutions and back then extended $8.95 trillion in secret, below-market-rate loans to three trading houses, constituting two-thirds of the original program’s total disbursements and The Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), which makes the Fed the buyer of last resort for loans in the broader economy, thereby providing liquidity in short term funding markets like small business loans. The Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMFL), directed at hedge funds and non-bank financial entities, and the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility, which protects PPP loan originators from borrower default, round out the rest.

Financial data for these programs are kept secret by the Fed with the exception of the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility. According to Mnuchin’s letter, two programs whose data is verboten use “core” EFS funding. In other words, the money comes from a slush fund operated by the Fed on behalf of the Treasury Department and is where the aforementioned $429 billion Mnuchin is disingenuously requesting “back” from the Fed actually is.

The shell game between the Treasury and the Fed keeps the money flowing on Wall Street year-round. In September of 2019, the Fed moved $9 trillion cumulatively into Wall Street’s trading houses via repo loans, whose recipients are hidden from the public by Fed policy on its open market operations, which fund the loans.

By using the ESF to fund the federal relief facilities contained in the CARES Act, the Treasury avails itself of the Fed’s secrecy policy on open market operations, which don’t have to be made public until one year after the facility is terminated at the earliest, as stipulated in section 1103 of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010.

Requesting an extension for the four Wall Street-geared facilities until March 2021 also extends the time it will take for such records to see the light of day. According to Wall Street on Parade, it is likely that once disclosed, the financial data for these secret market operations will include the names of long-standing beneficiaries of government largesse.

The point of the game is to prop up America’s predatory financial sector, which has been going full throttle since the 2008 financial crisis when these types of facilities were created to prevent the country’s biggest financial firms from going into a liquidity crisis as they scour the globe for more markets to squeeze.

Politicking

Mnuchin’s letter came two weeks after Democratic senators delivered a message of their own to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, in which they called for two facilities in the CARES Act meant for the regular citizen– specifically the Main Street Lending Program (MSLP) and the Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF) – to be kept on and reformed.

Signed by Senators Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Mark Warner, and Sherrod Brown, the letter makes a case for the expansion of these financial assistance programs citing statistics, which reflect the permanent closure of thousands of small businesses and declining revenue across the service economy.

The reality of crashing GDP numbers amid the pandemic tells the story, which includes a 41% decrease in the number of self-employed Black business owners between February and April and a litany of cases that show the “disproportionate economic impacts on minorities and women” caused by the pandemic and related restrictions.

The senators shed light on some of the major problems regarding these facilities and how they are set up to bypass the most economically vulnerable populations by requiring applicants to meet an income threshold that leaves out the vast majority of working-class Americans. In addition, they point to the billions of dollars left unused in the relief effort, which Mnuchin wants to keep in the ESF.

Fed Chairman Powell is quoted in the letter acknowledging that the MSLP currently targets “larger [businesses]” rather “than a lot of minority businesses.” The senators called for reforms that would change this by lowering the application threshold from $100,000 to $50,000 and expanding eligibility criteria to open the funds to more than the paltry 250 businesses currently eligible for the MSLP facility.

The fact that Mnuchin ignored the informed pleas of the Democratic senators is immediately chalked up to partisan politics. But, a gesture of goodwill by the outgoing administration does not help cement the division both parties exploit to achieve the aims of the interests that ultimately control them. A Biden administration will most certainly pounce on the morsels left behind by the outgoing Trump show to generate support for sweeping changes to the social contract as defined and imposed by the government through emergency response measures.

End of the katún

A desperate population facing evictions, food shortages, and falling income opportunities will find it difficult to resist any offers of federal help that come their way. It is, however, more important than ever as Americans are sheep herded into a “dark winter,” that they keep their eyes open.

Diane Yentel, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, is sure that a Biden administration will have a historic opportunity to expand government assistance programs in the very first days of his presidency, like the $100 billion emergency fund proposed by advocates to cover renters, landlords, and homeless people. The question is whether there will be real justice behind any new programs or legislation brought forward to deal with a crisis that has been looming for a while.

The Maya prophets saw the unscrupulous nature of their new Western European rulers and the temporary nature of their enterprises, built up only to steal and cheat. Those of the “two-day banks” and “rats” figure prominently in their descriptions of the world they saw unfolding before them. Their advice was patience. The days of the golden club are numbered and will disappear soon enough when the next series of ‘katuns’ rolls around.

Feature photo | Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell fist bumps Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin after a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 2, 2020. Jim Lo Scalzo | Pool via AP

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

The post With Rent Freezes About to Expire, Mnuchin Lobbies for More Wall Street Bailouts appeared first on MintPress News.

Welcome to MintCast — an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence– I’m your host Mnar Muhawesh Adley.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of Iran’s most senior nuclear scientists, was assassinated in his car last week on the outskirts of Tehran. State sources in the Islamic Republic are claiming he was killed with a remote-controlled machine gun.

While no party has taken responsibility, the Iranian government has already pointed the finger at a number of suspects, chiefly Israel, the United States, and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (commonly known as the MEK) a Washington-funded organization with the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Yet no party has claimed responsibility for the attack. At Fakhrizadeh’s funeral, Defense Minister Amir Hatami vowed that no crime as great as this would go unpunished and that the killing would not hinder Iran’s nuclear program.

Joining us today to discuss the assassination, its geopolitical context, and consequences, and what it means going forward for the U.S. and Iran, is Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian-American academic and political analyst. Seyed is a Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran and a frequent guest on a wide range of news and political channels.

Dr. Marandi argues that not only was this assassination an act of war, but a direct attack against Iran’s COVID-19 vaccine program. Fakhrezadeh was not only Iran’s top nuclear scientist, he was also leading the research program for the Islamic Republic’s COVID vaccine. Because of crippling U.S. sanctions, Iran has been barred from importing masks, ventilators, and medical supplies to support the country in its fight against the virus.

COVID-19, Marandi argues, has been weaponized against Iran’s nearly 90 million citizens to destabilize the country to a degree that no other sanctions could have accomplished.

Both the US and Israel have a history of interfering in Iranian affairs. Ten months ago, Donald Trump personally gave the order to assassinate Iranian military leader and statesman, Qassem Soleimani while he was in Iraq for regional peace talks. Trump has also increased and expanded existing sanctions against the Islamic Republic and pulled the United States out of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

With only weeks until Joe Biden is set to take up office in the White House, analysts are predicting that the assassination of Fakhrezadeh put the nail in the coffin for any worthwhile agreement between the two nations.

Fakhrizadeh’s death may have shocked Iranians, but it is unlikely to have surprised them, as his killing is the latest in a long line of political assassinations of high-ranking atomic scientists, at least five of whom have been murdered in the previous ten years. Some of them, like Masoud Ali Mohammadi and Majid Shahriar – both killed in separate car bombings in 2010- were Fakhrizadeh’s peers and coworkers.

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page.

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.

Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.

The post Podcast: The Assassination of a Nuclear Scientist and the War against Iran’s COVID-19 Vaccine appeared first on MintPress News.