Human Life | Uncle Jim goes for a nice ride to the Dead Sea with Black Cube

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BRO_5467 | Sand storm: photo by Bronfer, 5 May 2018



BRO_5467 | Sand storm: photo by Bronfer, 5 May 2018

BRO_5467 | Sand storm: photo by Bronfer, 5 May 2018

GAZA STRIP - A Palestinian hurls rocks during clashes with Israeli forces along the border with the Gaza strip, as Palestinians demonstrate for the right to return to their historic homeland in what is now Israel. Photo @MahmudHams #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 12 May 2018

Christian Kaufman, 9, walks past an American flag while carrying an airsoft gun in a holster during an open carry firearm rally during the annual NRA meeting in Dallas: Photo Adrees Latif: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 12 May 2018

Watch the process of creating an incredibly lifelike humanoid robot: image via Getty Images @GettyImages, 12 May 2018

SO NOW UNCLE JIM, YOU'VE GOT YOUR LUNCH MONEY AND YOUR BUS FARE ALL READY, RIGHT? AND ANYBODY ASKS YOU ANYTHING, YOU JUST SAY WHAT, AGAIN?

UH, UNCLE JIM. I'LL JUST SAY HI, I'M UNCLE JIM.

BEAUTIFUL, UNCLE JIM. JUST BEAUTIFUL. 

BUT, UH... MAYBE IT'D BE KINDA NICE TO... LIKE AT THE CIRCUS OR...

WHAT'S THAT, UNCLE JIM? YOU'RE MUMBLING AGAIN. WE CAN"T HEAR YOU. I MEAN, LOOK AT THE TIME. COME ON! SPEAK UP! 

I JUST WANNA KNOW... WHEN CAN WE GO...

GO WHERE, UNCLE JIM? YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL YOU CAN'T EVER AGAIN GO ANYWHERE AT ALL.

UH... ARIZONA...?  
 

BRO_0660: photo by Bronfer, 5 May 2018

 

8443: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 10 May 2018

Untitled: photo by umberto verdoliva, 19 April 2009


 Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli security forces in Bethlehem on 'Nakba' Day, May 15, 2017, as Palestinians mark 69 years since more than 760,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in the war surrounding Israel's declaration of independence: photo by Tom Coex/AFP, 15 May 2017
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GAZA CITY - A Palestinian demonstrator looks on during clashes with Israeli forces along the border with the Gaza strip, with the Gaza strip, as Palestinians demonstrate for the right to return to their historic homeland in what is now Israel. Photo @MahmudHams #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 12 May 2018

BRO_5451: photo by Bronfer, 8 May 2018

BRO_5451: photo by Bronfer, 8 May 2018

BRO_5451: photo by Bronfer, 8 May 2018
  

BRO_1526: photo by Bronfer, 11 April 2018

BRO_1526: photo by Bronfer, 11 April 2018

BRO_1526: photo by Bronfer, 11 April 2018 
 

So Uncle Jim goes for a nice ride with Cousin Black Cube and his little friends and their cute birdy with the really sharp talons to the Dead Sea but comes back feeling kinda all funny... and it's a little like that movie about the neutron bomb... you know everyone being dead and the buildings and stuff all still being there and all... I mean... you don't suppose... ?

Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

 Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

 Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

 Fiesta Mall. Mesa, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 21 July 2017

 East Cypress Street. Calle 16 Murals on The Hive. North 16th Street. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 May 2017

 East Cypress Street. Calle 16 Murals on The Hive. North 16th Street. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 May 2017

 East Cypress Street. Calle 16 Murals on The Hive. North 16th Street. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 May 2017

 Joshua Tree, CA: photo by Simon Kossoff, 4 November 2015

 Boulder Used for Drilling Contest, no. 2. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

 Boulder Used for Drilling Contest, no. 2. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

 Boulder Used for Drilling Contest, no. 2. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Petrified wood in Petrified Forest National park, Arizona: photo by Jonathan Zander, 2006

Human Life

Always behind my back I hear
The spastic clicking of jerked knees

And other automatic reactions

Tracking me through the years to where

Time’s winged chariot is double

Parked near the eternity frontier

And in such moments I want to participate

In human life less and less

But when I do the obligatory double take

And glance behind me into the dark green future

All I see stretching out are vast

Arizona republics of more 

Scottsdale, Arizona cityscape: photo by Dominic, 7 August 2006

Scottsdale, Arizona cityscape, taken from an unnamed hill northwest of my home: photo by Dominic, 7 August 2006

Blocks of petrified wood in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona: photo by Jonathan Zander, 8 May 2006

the hunter [Tempe, Arizona]: photo by m.r. nelson, 24 September 2017

the hunter [Tempe, Arizona]: photo by m.r. nelson, 24 September 2017

the hunter [Tempe, Arizona]: photo by m.r. nelson, 24 September 2017

mesa 00786 [Mesa, AZ]: photo by m.r. nelson, 14 January 2018

mesa 00786 [Mesa, AZ]: photo by m.r. nelson, 14 January 2018

mesa 00786 [Mesa, AZ]: photo by m.r. nelson, 14 January 2018

Persecuted and discriminated against throughout the nation, these sanctimonious land-thieving murican pinheads gathered together into small defensive enclaves, inevitably amounting to a territory that was admitted to the union solely in order to sequester them, as a diabolical congregation, away from the general population, and thus isolated, and able to inflict immediate harm only on the impoverished and oppressed local native american residents, who never deserved this, and on the equally impoverished and oppressed people of the adjacent state of Mexico, likewise hardly deserving, they thrived and grew powerful on the strength of their amalgamated whites-only consumer buying power, which allowed them to turn every situation into a bought situation, as your standard issue murican white person is wont to do, and a large part of the earth into a dry-baked antiseptically-sterilized parking-lot for their infernal squadrons of air conditioned SUVs. It was during this period of the establishment of their "culture", a nearly lifelike simulacrum of actual human life, that they unwittingly drew over, or perhaps it's more accurate to say, carved into, that vast desart waste of sage and stone and sand, the outlines of what would come, surely by accident, to resemble nothing so much as the "culture" of the state of Israel, the arizona republic's so-far-and-yet-so-near sister-state-without-a-spirit, in the great XXI century ziowalmartian walking dead global order.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews burn leaven in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem, ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 21 April 2016

Ultra-Orthodox Jews burn leaven in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem, ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 21 April 2016

César Vallejo: Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca (Black stone on top of a white stone)

البيت العتيق -- The Primordial House "Ka'aba" at Mecca during hajj season: photo by A.S. Dhanny, 19 October 2012

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris -- it does not bother me --
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads...

Panorama of Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque) at Mecca, Saudi Arabia: photo by Bluemango2z, 22 December 2007

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un día del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París y no me corro
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.

Jueves será, porque hoy, jueves, que proso
estos versos, los húmeros me he puesto
a la mala y, jamás como hoy, me he vuelto,
con todo mi camino, a verme solo.

César Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban
todos sin que él les haga nada;
le daban duro con un palo y duro

también con una soga; son testigos
los días jueves y los huesos húmeros,
la soledad, la lluvia, los caminos...

 

The Ka'aba in Mecca surrounded by pilgrims during Hajj season: photo by Al-Fassam, 1 January 2003

César Vallejo (1892-1938): Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca (Black stone on top of a white stone) from Poemas Humanos (Human Poems) (1923-1938), 1938; English version by Thomas Merton, 1960

  
Note: Meir Dagan, one of the main actors in this FLLF bombing operation, also served as the Honorary President of #BlackCube: image via Remi Brulin @RBrulin, 8 May 2018



Note: Meir Dagan, one of the main actors in this FLLF bombing operation, also served as the Honorary President of #BlackCube: image via Remi Brulin @RBrulin, 8 May 2018



Note: Meir Dagan, one of the main actors in this FLLF bombing operation, also served as the Honorary President of #BlackCube: image via Remi Brulin @RBrulin, 8 May 2018



Note: Meir Dagan, one of the main actors in this FLLF bombing operation, also served as the Honorary President of #BlackCube: image via Remi Brulin @RBrulin, 8 May 2018

So let me just get this straight, sis - black cube was born out of a black stone on top of a white stone in the devil's red right hand, at night, perhaps somewhere near the sea, in, like - lebanon?

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Progetto Realtà parallele: photo by umberto verdoliva, 16 April 2009

Israel Uses Intelligence Cutouts To Target the US: From JCPOA to FTA – cutouts can cost the US billions: Grant Smith, Anti War dot com, 11 May 2018

An Israeli intelligence entity called "Black Cube" targeted Obama administration officials   such as former foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes and outside experts, such as the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi, that advocated for passage of the JCPOA known as the "Iran nuclear deal." Though most media reports reference Black Cube’s self-designation as a "private intelligence company" while noting it employs former Mossad officers, there are reasons to doubt it is entirely unconnected from the Israeli government, which wanted to undermine the JCPOA. Israeli spy Shai Masot, secretly recorded in an Al Jazeera undercover video, freely admitted Israel was setting up just such private corporations to clandestinely do its bidding. While not solely responsible for the Trump Administration’s decision to ditch the JCPOA, Black Cube’s intelligence operation clearly tried to inch the US closer to open military conflict with Iran, which could cost countless lives and trillions of dollars.

 

Black Cube’s covert operations targeting the JCPOA and previously as a gun-for-hire against Harvey Weinstein's victims at first glance seem risky, reckless and rushed. Blind offers of cash for consulting on "movie projects" via email solicitations, using thin LinkedIn profiles and Wix generated websites. Recorded phone calls to incriminate or blackmail unknowing victims. Why use such a clumsy foreign cutout to target mostly U.S.-based American citizens?

 

The answer is simple, Black Cube as an overseas cutout can be folded up or reconstituted in the extremely unlikely event of criminal investigation. It is disposable. It therefore provides a thick layer of insulation between the users of potentially illegally obtained information and the gatherer. If Black Cube had managed to gather incriminating information on Parsi or Rhoads via illegally recorded phone calls while either was located in a two-party consent state, Black Cube could still pass the information to friendly recipient journalists and interest groups in the US, eager to trash the JCPOA, and who could not be prosecuted.

 

Cutouts performing illegal activity for Israel’s US operatives are not new. Rather, cutouts are now a preferred model for Israeli intelligence operations targeting the United States when the stakes are very high. While damage assessments are hard to quantify in most cases, one operation can be precisely calculated every year: cutout Dan Halpern’s economic espionage against US industry has through 2017 cost America precisely $170.72 billion.

 

 Source: US Census Bureau – International Trade Data

In the mid-1980s Israel was in an economic crisis, begging the Reagan administration for billions in emergency aid. AIPAC and its economic gurus such as Stanley Fischer demaned hat he US unilaterally lower all of its tariffs to Israeli exports, a program internally dubbed, "Duty Free Treatment for US Imports from Israel." Realizing that even this euphemistic framing was a bit of a giveaway, the lobby later redubbed it the "US Israel Free Trade Area," incorrectly implying that US producers would someday have improved Israeli market access (which they, for the most part, never gained).

 

There was only one problem. US industry, from chemical giants to agricultural and labor interests, were universally opposed to the "FTA", seeing it as a Trojan horse for future deals that would prioritize obscure foreign or special interests over domestic US industry. Their formal written opposition, lodged with the International Trade Commission, put Israel’s US lobbying entity, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a bind. AIPAC needed to know the details of each industry’s secret submissions to ITC, in order to effectively lobby against them on Israel’s behalf. But AIPAC couldn’t just have friends inside the ITC hand them a copy of the classified industry report to study and circulate. AIPAC needed a cutout.

 

This was the role of Dan Halpern, Israeli Minister of Economics. Halpern obtained a copy of the classified ITC report – he would not tell the FBI how – and passed it to AIPAC’s lobbyists to reproduce, circulate and begin their lobbying and PR campaign for the FTA. AIPAC defeated powerful US industry groups using their own data against them. When the FTA fully went into effect, it reversed a formerly balanced trading relationship with one producing an enormous trade surplus for Israel. By cumulative, inflation adjusted deficit, it is still America’s single worst performing bilateral FTA.

 

  

Annual and Cumulative Trade Surplus (or Deficit) – $ Billion, Inflation adjusted

After an initially robust counterintelligence and theft of government property investigation, the FBI realized that because Dan Halpern could claim diplomatic immunity, neither Halpern nor AIPAC could be successfully prosecuted.

 

The new revelations of Black Cube and the JCPOA present only a slightly new twist on an old cutout tactic Israel deploys when the stakes are high enough. Rather than claim diplomatic immunity like Halpern, Black Cube can simply slink away to whatever darkly lit cubicles at the Kidon or wherever it came from, to later reemerge for Israel’s next major initiative targeting America.

 

Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington and the author of the 2016 book, Big Israel: How Israel's Lobby Moves America.

Palestinians react following tear gas that was fired by Israeli forces after Friday prayers on a street outside Jerusalem's Old City: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 21 July 2017

 Palestinians react following tear gas that was fired by Israeli forces after Friday prayers on a street outside Jerusalem's Old City: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 21 July 2017


 
Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike on a UN school in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza where civilians were sheltering from the fighting, medics and witnesses said: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP, 17 January 2009

 

Palestinians lift a wounded woman onto a vehicle after the Israeli air force attacked Gaza City, December 27, 2009. More than 200 people died in the strikes.: photo by Reuters, 27 December 2008

 

Smoke rises after an air strike during Israeli's offensive in Gaza on January 8, 2009. Palestinians faced even grimmer conditions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday after a UN aid agency halted work, saying its staff were at risk from Israeli forces: photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters, 8 January 2009

An Israeli border policeman uses pepper spray on a Palestinian man during clashes near the Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi al-Joz, on Friday: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 2 October 2015



An Israeli border policeman uses pepper spray on a Palestinian man during clashes near the Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi al-Joz, on Friday: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 2 October 2015

A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes near the Jewish settlement of Bet El, near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday: photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters, 5 October 2014

A Palestinian protester uses a sling to hurl stones towards Israeli troops during clashes near the Jewish settlement of Bet El, near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday: photo by Mohamad Torokman/Reuters, 5 October 2014

WEST BANK : A Palestinian youth hurls rocks at Israeli soldiers during clashes near Ramallah. By Abbas Momani #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 5 October 2015

AFP Israeli photographer Menahem Kahana is roughed up by by an Israeli policeman at a demonstration. By @TomCOEX #AFP: image by AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 4 October 2015

Israel razes homes of Palestinian militants in Jerusalem: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 6 October 2015

A Palestinian boy sleeps on a mattress inside the remains of his family’s house, that was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war in 2014 summer, during a sandstorm in Gaza on Tuesday: photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters, 8 September 2015

 

A Palestinian boy sleeps on a mattress inside the remains of his family’s house, that was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war in 2014 summer, during a sandstorm in Gaza on Tuesday: photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters, 8 September 2015

Arab women march in the old city of #Jerusalem to condemn the blockade of al-Aqsa mosque: image via Palestine Social @PalestineSocial, 4 October 2015


 Netanyahu vows 'fight to death' as clashes spread after attacks: image by Agence France-Presse @AFP 5 October 2015

#Jerusalem #Palestinian correspondent Hana Hammad live after Israeli soldiers fired gas bomb on her face: image via souamesfarah @souamesfarah, 4 October 2015

Israeii border police stop and frisk a Palestinian youth next to the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem: photo by Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency, 25 February 2016

Israeii border police stop and frisk a Palestinian youth next to the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem: photo by Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency, 25 February 2016

A Palestinian man uses a rope to climb over a section of Israel’s controversial separation barrier that separates the West Bank city of al-Ram from east Jerusalem: photo by Thomas Coex/AFP, 25 February 2016

A Palestinian man uses a rope to climb over a section of Israel’s controversial separation barrier that separates the West Bank city of al-Ram from east Jerusalem: photo by Thomas Coex/AFP, 25 February 2016

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney before the start of the 84th Academy Awards show: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 22 February 2012

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney before the start of the 84th Academy Awards show: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 22 February 2012

That wee fiddler though - are we talking ayahuascan here?  (clue for my compadres of the parkland generation: couldn't swear to it but this must have been, like, "the day" - bonafide, pure uncut, fully and happily guilt-free Imperial - so totally pre harv, pre-rose, pre-prurience-as-a-machine-to-move-the-units, pre everything!!!)

 
Ethan Hawke with Uma Thurman on the red carpet during arrivals at the 74th Academy Awards celebration at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 24 March 2002

 

Ethan Hawke with Uma Thurman on the red carpet during arrivals at the 74th Academy Awards celebration at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 24 March 2002

Members of the news media on the red carpet for the 86th annual Academy Awards ceremony as nominees and celebrities arrived: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times. 2 March 2014

Members of the news media on the red carpet for the 86th annual Academy Awards ceremony as nominees and celebrities arrived: photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times. 2 March 2014

Near West Buckeye Road, Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 February 2017

Near West Buckeye Road, Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 February 2017

Near West Buckeye Road, Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 February 2017

Woodlawn Neighborhood. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Phoenix, Arizona.: : photo by Dean Terasaki, 1 June  2017

Woodlawn Neighborhood. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Phoenix, Arizona.: : photo by Dean Terasaki, 1 June  2017

Woodlawn Neighborhood. May Peace Prevail on Earth. Phoenix, Arizona.: : photo by Dean Terasaki, 1 June  2017

People at a beach near Sydney during the Labour Day holiday in Australia: photo by Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse via New York Times, 6 October 2015

West Buckeye Road. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 September 2017

West Buckeye Road. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 September 2017

West Buckeye Road. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 23 September 2017

Black Cube dwelt quietly and without drawing attention to himself, for a number of years, in this humble American dwelling, which he liked very much because it reminded him very much of... and so on [from leaked Mossad internal memo PDF]

Near The Stack. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 11 May 2016

Near The Stack. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 11 May 2016

Near The Stack. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 11 May 2016

... and just down the block, this agreeable native pleasure centre perfect for the offduty undercover with the topsecret yet!!

Bar Interior. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Bar Interior. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Bar Interior. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Holiday Inn Apts. South 17th Avenue. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 10 July 2016

Holiday Inn Apts. South 17th Avenue. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 10 July 2016

Holiday Inn Apts. South 17th Avenue. Phoenix, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 10 July 2016

Superior, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Superior, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

Superior, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 18 May 2017

 

Puerto López (2017) [Puerto Lopez, Manabi, Ecuador]: photo by Carlos Oliva Delgado, 26 July 2017