Nadat zaterdag 23 maart jl. een Russisch militair vliegtuig ongeveer 100 Russische militairen en militaire goederen afleverde in Caracas is men in het Witte Huis volgens gebruikelijke hypocriete manier theatraal de bol uitgegaan….. Eerst liet Trump al weten dat deze provocatieve actie van Rusland een ernstig gevaar is voor de ‘internationale vrede’ (waar? ha! ha!) en veiligheid in de regio……
Bolton de psychopathische adviseur van Trump, als Trump een oorlogsmisdadiger, herhaalde deze woorden en voegde daar de waarschuwing aan toe voor partijen van buiten de westerse ‘hemisfeer’, niet te proberen een bruggenhoofd te vormen in Venezuela of andere gebieden in het westen, daarbij uiteraard doelend op Rusland als ‘bruggenhoofd bouwer….’ (hoewel hij met deze woorden natuurlijk ook China waarschuwt…)
Je vraagt je werkelijk af waar de twee het gore lef vandaan halen anderen te beschuldigen van zaken en hen daarvoor te waarschuwen, zaken die de VS bij herhaling zelf elders doet, sterker nog: de VS heeft meer dan 800 militaire bases over de wereld en dat bepaald niet alleen in de ‘westerse hemisfeer……’ De VS gaat trouwens ook op ander gebied veel verder, dat middels een genocide gestolen land voert de ene illegale oorlog na de andere en bemoeit zich met binnenlandse aangelegenheden zonder daarvoor te zijn gevraagd, zoals nu weer in Venezuela…… Rusland trad niet eigenhandig op in Syrië en Venezuela, maar op uitdrukkelijke vraag van het bevoegde gezag in die landen, want wat de VS ook vindt en zegt over die landen, het zijn en blijven soevereine landen waar de VS niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets te zoeken heeft…..
Het is maar goed dat de Trump administratie niet in Moskou is gevestigd, immers dan hadden we al lang en breed in WOIII gezeten, gezien de westerse agressie langs de grenzen met Rusland, een plek waar de VS, noch haar oorlogshond de NAVO, iets te zoeken hebben, zoals blijkt uit een overeenkomst in 1991 gesloten met Michail Gorbatsjov, de ex-president van de Sovjet Unie… Dit alles terwijl Rusland niet eens hetzelfde doet langs de grenzen van de VS……. (mocht Rusland hetzelfde proberen langs de grens van de VS >> het land zou te klein zijn voor de verontwaardiging en hysterie die dit zou oproepen, zie het voorbeeld daarvan: de Cubacrisis in 1962…… de link is naar dat onderdeel op Wikipedia, dus let op, daar deze site tegenwoordig deels is afgeladen met niet te corrigeren onzin…)
Tot slot nog dit: als er één land is dat zelfs de wereldvrede bedreigt en overal waar het illegaal ingrijpt dood en verderf zaait, is het de VS wel, of het nu gaat om de westerse of oosterse hemisfeer…..
De VS is verreweg de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde en heeft vanaf WOII tot nu toe al meer dan 22,5 miljoen mensen vermoord in illegale oorlogen; geheime militaire acties onder bevel van de CIA; het organiseren van opstanden in meerdere buiten landen; voorts vielen de doden bijstaatsgrepen gepleegd door de CIA en bij standrechtelijke executies van verdachten, nu vooral gedaan middels drones…..* Veel van de hiervoor genoemde VS terreur werd NB uitgeoefend in Latijns-Amerika…….
Het volgende bericht komt van Zero Hedge en werd geschreven door Tyler Durden:
Stay Out Of Western Hemisphere! Bolton Warns Russia Over Troops In Venezuela
The White House has dramatically stepped up its rhetoric threatening action against Russia’s military presence in Venezuela after the Kremlin deployed a troop contingency to Caracas last Saturday.
Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton took tensions to a new level, on Friday issuing a new Monroe doctrine of sorts, telling Moscow any attempt to establish or expand military operationsin the western hemisphere constitutes a “provocative” and “direct threat” to international peace and security in the region.
“We stronglycaution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations,” Bolton said in a statement.
“We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region,” he added. This follows the president’s own warning on Wednesday that“all options” are on the table regarding potential expanding Russian presence in Venezuela.
Two Russian aircraft carrying about 100 servicemen and 35 tons of cargo arrived in Caracas last Saturday, led by Russian General Vasily Tonkoshkurov, identified as chief of the Main Staff of the Ground Forces and First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces of Russia.
This prompted Trump’s Wednesday warning to Russia against involvement in the Latin American nation; he told reporters in the Oval Office that:
“Russia has to get out.”
Kremlin officials responded by explaining that it deployed military specialists merely to service preexisting arms contracts with Venezuela, and that Russia is not interfering in the Latin American country’s internal affairs.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing on Thursday when asked how long the Russian troop contingency led by a high ranking general will stay:
“How long? As long as they need to, and as long as the Venezuelan government needs them. It all is being done based on bilateral agreements.”
Russia’s position is that it is not interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs by merely cooperating on legal and existing service contracts, and that no other country should do so either. It said that only “specialists”had entered Venezuela under a pre-existing agreed upon military cooperation deal.
However, the White House isn’t buying it, as Bolton’s Friday statement further condemned Maduro’s “use of foreign military personnel in his attempt to remain in power, including the introduction of Russian military personnel and equipment into Venezuela.”
“Maduro will only use this military support to further repress the people of Venezuela; perpetuate the economic crisis that has destroyed Venezuela’s economy; and endanger regional stability,” Bolton said.
All of this also comes as the Maduro government stripped US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido of his position in the National Assembly, further barring him from holding public office for 15 years.
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onderdoet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
Naar aanleiding van een Twitterbericht dat Tulsi Gabbard de wereld instuurde en waarin zij stelt dat kortzichtige politici en hun hulp in de massamedia, de laatste 2 jaar bezig zijn geweest Trump neer te zetten als een marionet van Putin, schreef Caitlin Johnstone het hieronder opgenomen artikel….. Van Russiagate is intussen geen spaan meer heel, zoveel is wel duidelijk uit de rapportage van Mueller (die nog steeds niet helemaal openbaar is gemaakt), waar de hysterie over ‘Russische manipulaties’ ervoor hebben gezorgd dat de nieuwe koude oorlog verder is opgetuigd, met de daarmee gepaard gaande peperdure wapenrace en inperking van de privacy, plus censuur op het internet…… Let wel die censuur en inperking van de privacy werden en worden doorgevoerd in zogenaamde westerse democratieën, terwijl dat soort maatregelen ‘thuishoren’ in een dictatuur…..
Gabbard voegde aan haar Twitterbericht toe dat Trump er alles aan heeft gedaan niet langer te worden gezien als marionet van Putin, juist door een veel harder beleid tegen Rusland te voeren, waarbij hij zelfs de kans op een kernoorlog niet uit de weg is gegaan en zo’n oorlog nog steeds niet uitsluit……
In het Twitterbericht van Gabbard is ‘geen woord Spaans’ opgenomen, bovendien een waarheid als een koe! Echter de reacties op dit bericht waren niet misselijk. Gabbard wordt figuurlijk afgemaakt door die massamedia, politici en opiniemakers van diverse rechtse denktanks……. (de laatste zijn in de VS altijd rechts, ‘maar goed..’)
Zoals gezegd: Caitlin Johnstone publiceerde op haar site het hieronder opgenomen artikel en als conclusie stelt ze dat de welgestelden niet voor niets zoveel geld steken in het beheren van de media, immers als je de media beheerst, beheers je en regisseer je het denkbeeld dat bij het volk leeft…… Plutocraten beheersen de westerse: -media, -politici en -denktanks, zij hebben belang bij de huidige inhumane neoliberale status quo, ja zelfs bij de nieuwe koude oorlog en alle andere illegale oorlogen die de VS voert, immers dit geteisem heeft veel aandelen in de wapenindustrie, waaronder ik ook de fabrikanten reken die rollend, varend en vliegend oorlogstuig produceren, een industrie die zoals je begrijpt baat heeft bij zoveel mogelijk oorlog en spanningen in de wereld……
Gezien het voorgaande kan je dan ook stellen dat elke claim vals is die de VS maakt als het weer een illegale oorlog voert, of als het een opstand dan wel coup organiseert en regisseert, de claim dat dit is om democratie te brengen en een bloedige dictator af te zetten…… In werkelijkheid heeft VS schijt aan democratie en bloedige dictators, zolang het bewuste land maar de hielen van de VS likt, VS bedrijven toelaat en in de VS grote ‘defensie orders’ plaatst…. Sterker nog: de VS steunt een aantal dictators, niet in de laatste plaats de reli-fascistische dictaturen van het Midden-Oosten…. (Saoedi-Arabië, de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten >> VAE, Egypte en buiten het Midden-Oosten: Marokko) Intussen is bekend dat Mueller de hele Russiagate leugen heeft afgeschoten, daar er geen bewijs voor is te vinden….. Met Russiagate werd zoals gezegd niet alleen de vrijheid van meningsuiting zwaar geweld aangedaan middels censuur op het internet, maar werd ook de Koude Oorlog 2.0 opgetuigd….. Aan het voorgaande hebben de reguliere media grote steun verleend, met een enorme berg aan fake news (nepnieuws), waarvoor deze media niet worden gestraft middels de al eerder genoemde censuur, hoewel de bewijzen daarvoor letterlijk voor het oprapen liggen…… Waar sociale media die aantoonbaar echt nieuws brengen, worden afgemaakt in die reguliere westerse media en door de westerse politiek en ze worden geblokkeerd op Facebook en Twitter……..
Last month I published an essay about the importance of understanding the difference between fact and narrative, and I just want to quickly highlight a perfect illustration of this importance in a controversy arising from a recent Tulsi Gabbard tweet. The tweet reads as follows:
“Short-sighted politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War & arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet—even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.”
Now, all the facts say that Gabbard’s claim that Trump has been bringing the world closer to nuclear war with Russia is indisputably true. It is perhaps possible to dispute the notion that Trump has escalated tensions with Russia to try and “prove he’s not Putin’s puppet”; maybe an argument could be made that he’s simply reckless and violent or that he’s particularly beholden to cold war profiteers, or that despite all his rhetoric he just really, really hates Russia for some reason. But it is absolutely not disputable that Trump has greatly escalated tensions with a nuclear superpower by implementing a Nuclear Posture
These facts are all well documented in the mainstream press and are entirely beyond dispute. The facts say that Donald Trump has escalated nuclear tensions with Russia more than any other president since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you go to Gabbard’s tweet and read the responses right now, you’ll find thousands and thousands of
Democratic establishment loyalists calling her a liar for saying so.
“Gabbard staking out a bold ‘Trump is *too* tough on Putin’ lane in the Democratic primary,” tweeted former NSA attorney Susan Hennessey of CNN and the Brookings Institution. “As predictable as it is absurd.”
“Tulsi Gabbard’s is the only Twitter account other than Trump’s that I routinely have to check to make sure it’s actually hers, because the tweet is so absurdly ridiculous,” tweeted #Resistance pundit John Aravosis. “Now she’s defending Trump on Russia. Why is she a Democrat? And she’s actually using Kremlin talking points (nuclear war!). Unbelievable.”
“Tulsi, you aren’t the first American politician to cozy up to foreign dictators and to serve as a Putin mouthpiece,” tweeted former CIA officer Evan McMullin. “While you, Putin and Trump fear monger about nuclear war, we’ll protect our democracy and hold corrupted politicians accountable.”
There are many, many more, but you get the picture. The deluge of responses to Gabbard’s undeniably true statement about Trump’s dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower are largely predicated on two assumptions: (1) that Trump has not in fact made the escalations that he has made, and (2) that the danger of nuclear war is not a real or significant thing. These are both, obviously, bat shit insane.
The primary risk of nuclear war is not that one will be planned out and deliberately started in an attempt to win, but that a warhead will be deployed amid the chaos of escalating tensions as a result of miscommunication, misunderstanding or technical failure, as nearly happened on more than one occasion during the last cold war. Once one nuclear weapon has been deployed in an already tense situation, it’s unlikely that the full arsenals of both sides won’t be unleashed upon each other. As journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out in response to the uproar over Gabbard’s tweet, “The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ doomsday clock is at 2 minutes before midnight. By far its two greatest threats to *humanity’s existence* are climate change & US/Russia nuclear war. Yes, how crazy and treasonous to want to avoid ratcheting up tensions.”
The US and Russia are by an immensely wide margin the two biggest nuclear powers on the planet, which makes for a lot of small, unpredictable moving parts with mounting tensions steadily increasing the probability of something going catastrophically wrong.
Dismissing a congresswoman’s attempt to point at this potentially world-ending risk as a “Kremlin talking point” is about the stupidest, craziest thing that a human brain could possibly come up with.
Twenty-nine years after the end of the Cold War, the world’s combined stockpiles of nuclear weapons remain at unacceptably high levels.
ploughshares.org
So what’s up with that? Why is an indisputably true claim about an indisputably real danger being treated as a lie by Democratic Party loyalists, even though it attacks the same president they themselves claim to oppose?
The answer is because it doesn’t fit the narrative. A consensus has been built over the last two years that Trump is a Kremlin puppet, so the indisputable fact that his administration is endangering the life of every organism on this planet by escalating tensions with Russia looks like a lie against that backdrop. The facts say one thing, the narrative says another, and they go with the narrative. For most people, narrative takes precedence over fact.
And what’s interesting is that these same facts could have remained exactly as they are and allowed the exact opposite narrative to be constructed. If her plutocratic owners had wished it, Rachel Maddow would have spent every night over the last two years warning everyone that Donald Trump is taking dangerous actions against Russia that threaten to wipe all life off the face of the earth, and it would have worked. If Trump had continued making these escalations in our hypothetical alternate timeline while the mass media was constantly selling the “Trump’s going to get us all killed in a nuclear war with Russia” narrative, all the same blue-checkmarked Twitter pundits you see yelling at Tulsi Gabbard today would be yelling about the dangers of nuclear war in our alternate timeline.
Narrative really is that powerful. You see it in the behavior of social media users, you see it in the behavior of governments, you see it in religions, and you see it in abusive relationships which continue because of the narrative “He’s a good guy underneath it all and he really loves me” even though the facts say “He beats you and cheats on you all the time.” If you can control the stories that people tell themselves about a given situation, then you control those people on all matters pertaining to that situation. Regardless of facts.
Which is why the plutocratic class funnels so much money into buying up media influence, funding think tanks, and other means of narrative control: if you can control the narrative, no amount of facts will deter the mainstream public from going along with your agendas. This is why the behaviors of governments so consistently move in alignment with the interests of this same media-buying, think tank-funding, politician-owning plutocratic class. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world.
_________________________
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‘Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht…………‘ (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende artikelen: ‘Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie‘ en ‘Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary‘)
MintPressNews bracht afgelopen vrijdag een artikel van Ahmed AbdulKareem over de strijd die lokale stammen in Oost-Jemen voeren tegen Saoedi-Arabië, daar dit land samen met de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) bezig is met het inrichten van militaire bases in dat deel van Jemen (genaamd al-Mahrah….)……
De stammen blokkeren de invoer van militair materieel en dat is niet de eerste keer, al wordt de huidige blokkade gevoerd met wapens en niet zoals een eerdere vreedzame sit-in (demonstratie) die Saoedi-Arabië in 2017 bloedig heeft neergeslagen….. In Jemen woedt een vergeten (illegale) oorlog, een oorlog die is uitgemond in een genocide tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen, een zaak waarover de reguliere westerse media amper berichten en al helemaal niet in combinatie met het woord ‘genocide…’ Niet vreemd dus dat dit feit, het neerslaan van vreedzame demonstraties in 2017, al helemaal niet werd gemeld, zelfs niet op de sociale media die wel echt nieuws brengen (althans ik ben die berichten niet tegengekomen)…..
Hoe lang laat de wereld de Saoedische terreurcoalitie doorgaan met haar genocide, zonder zelfs maar commentaar te geven??? De hoogste tijd voor een boycot van Saoedi-Arabië en haar terreurcoalitie, die verder bestaat uit de VAE, Egypte en Marokko, waar dan meteen een boycot aan vastgeknoopt moet worden tegen de VS en GB, die Saoedi-Arabië blijven voorzien van wapens, munitie, naast training en de levering van rollend, varend en vliegend oorlogstuig. Waar nog extra moet worden gewezen op de al helemaal kwalijke rol die de VS speelt: tot november vorig jaar voorzag de VS het vliegend oorlogstuig van de Saoedische terreurcoalitie 9.000 keer van (veelal gratis) brandstof in de lucht, deed de coördinatie van de bombardementen en hielp fysiek mee met commando’s op de grond en met de zeeblokkade tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen….. Voor zover bekend doet de VS nog steeds de coördinatie van de bombardementen (met haar radarvliegtuigen) en helpt het nog steeds mee aan de zeeblokkade, een blokkade die NB de honger in Jemen heeft veroorzaakt….. Ook aan de levering van oorlogstuig is geen eind gekomen, al schijnt het congres nu voor een volledige stop op de hulp aan de Saoedische terreurcoalitie te zijn……
Lees het volgende artikel van Ahmed AbdulKareem en zegt het voort, de reguliere media doen er het zwijgen toe als het gaat om de genocide die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert in Jemen, waar diezelfde media wel volledig de plaat uitgingen over de moord op Khashoggi*, die het grootste deel van zijn leven de reli-fascistische dictatuur Saoedi-Arabië heeft verdedigd…….. (waarmee ik niet wil zeggen dat het niet een enorme schande is dat Khashoggi werd vermoord…) Dezelfde reguliere media die keer op keer durven te zeggen dat Iran de Houthi’s** militair steunt, een leugen van enorme proporties, nooit heeft men deze leugen kunnen bewijzen…….. blijft ook Nederland Saoedi-Arabië steunen met de genocide, door levering van wapenonderdelen aan deze reli-fascistische dictatuur, ook aan deze schandelijke gang van zaken dient onmiddellijk een eind te komen!!
The latest incident came amidst a precipitous rise in tensions in eastern Yemen, where local residents have been grappling with an increasingly brazen military buildup by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Al-MAHRAH, YEMEN — Fierce clashes have erupted between local tribes and Saudi forces supported by local mercenary groups in the Haat district of Yemen’s eastern Mahrah province. The clashes were sparked when local tribal members prevented Saudi shipping containers containing military equipment and household appliances from entering the country via al-Shihan border crossings with Oman, where Saudi Arabia plans to build anew military base..
Witnesses told MintPress News that the tribal groups stopped the trucks and checked them, then forced them to return. In the wake of this incident, fierce clashes erupted leaving Saudi mercenaries injured. Saudi warplanes could also be seen circling the skies above the area.
The latest incident came amidst a precipitous rise in tensions in eastern Yemen, where local residents have been grappling with an increasingly brazen military buildup by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Just last week, Saudi troops, tanks, and artillery arrived at the coastal area of Eienah, east of al-Gaydah, without coordinating with local authorities, a Yemeni official who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MintPress.
The attack has dangerous connotations for the region and comes less than six months after three protesters were killed by Saudi forces during a sit-in opposing the Saudi Coalition’s military buildup in eastern Yemen. Following the attack on the peaceful protest, local tribes in al-Mahrah vowed to take up arms against Saudi-led forces in order to prevent the construction of more checkpoints and military bases in their country.
Al-Mahrah residents see the build-up of Saudi troops in the district as part of a pattern of malign and colonial Saudi policies in their country. Riyadh has deployed its forces in al-Mahrah under the guise of reconstruction and counter-smuggling operations. But Saudi forces have taken control of an increasingly long list of local government facilities, including the al-Ghaydah Airport, the Nishtun port, Sarfit, and the Shehn border crossing, as well as a number of coastal areas.
Last week, Ali bin Salem al-Huraizy, al-Mahrah’s former deputy governor said: “The Saudis are determined to militarize the sea and land. They [Saudis] try to build a Saudi camp [base] every ten kilos.” He called on the people of al-Mahrah province to prepare to defend their sovereignty against Saudi Arabia by force of arms if necessary.
The Deputy Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the peaceful sit-in, Aboud Qamasit, said that Saudi Arabia and its local allies have not shown any goodwill — quite the contrary, they increasingly build military bases in the province. He promised that al-Mahrah’s residents will continue to hold sit-ins and protests.
The sit-in committee, which was formed by al-Mahrah residents, said in a statement on March 12 that Saudi Arabian forces kidnapped two civilians, taking them to al-Ghaydah Airport prison, a Saudi secret prison in the region, where dozens of detainees are subjected to serious abuses and assaults according to the sit-in committee.
Ahmed Belhaf, a leader in the protest movement, said in a statement on March 2, that “there are an estimated 24 Saudi camps in the Ghaydah Airport operating under the supervision of the airport commander and training hundreds of extremist and terrorist militias.”
Saudi Arabia launched a brutal military campaign in late 2017 against al-Mahrah, which borders Oman and has remained largely immune to the broader war in Yemen, as both the Houthis and other armed groups have little presence in the province. Saudi Arabia claims that arms smuggling operations by the Houthis are being carried out from Oman into Yemen via the al-Mahrah border crossing, though the Saudis have provided no evidence to back their claim, which Oman has repeatedly denied.
Saudi meddling in Mahrah politics
Protesters in al-Ghaydah demand the expulsion of Saudi forces from the province. Photo | Ahmed AbdulKareem
A local Yemeni official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Saudi Arabia has begun implementing a plan to eliminate Oman’s allies in the province, including the Mahri General Council, the largest opposition party to Saudi policies and plans in al-Mahrah, which is comprised of political and tribal forces and led by Sultan Abdullah bin Isa Al Afar, a key ally of Oman.
In an effort to undermine local opposition to its military expansion in the region, Saudi Arabia plans to establish a new tribal council, replacing the Mahri General Council, which is to be led by Rajeh Said Bakrit. Bakrit was appointed by the Coalition as a governor of al Mahrah on November 27, 2017, to replace Mohammed Abdullah Kuddah after Kuddah spoke out against Saudi Arabia’s presence. The first phase of that plan includes monthly payoffs of 30,000 Saudi riyals ($8000) to 60 tribal elders and influential figures.
Many strategic analysts see the Saudi plan as a way to apply pressure on Oman, which enjoys long borders and solid relations with the residents of al-Mahrah. Much to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Oman also enjoys cordial relations with Saudi rival Iran, a relationship that the Coalition is eager to undermine.
In an effort to stem Saudi influence in the region, residents of al-Hawf, which lies east of al-Mahrah, announced the formation of a General Forum to bring area management back into the hands of local Mahrahi residents and organize civil projects in the area. The General Forum is being supported by the government of Oman and the effort is expected to spread to nearby districts.
Saudi forces in eastern Yemen have recently been accused of planting monitoring devices into local communications networks — developed by a foreign engineering team and supported by Bakrit, according to a local official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said that the devices would allow Saudi forces to monitor and spy on residents and leaders who oppose the Saudi occupation and undermine the local opposition identifying and then assassinating or arresting its leaders.
Infiltration, assassination
al-Mahrah residents in the Hwaf district carry slogans rejecting the militarization of the province, the presence of militias, and Saudi intervention, Jan, 2019. Photo | Ahmed AbdulKareem
A Saudi military commander in al-Mahrah allegedly asked Bakrit to reveal the names of the most prominent leaders who oppose the Saudi presence in the province, threatening to ‘physically liquidate’ them. On Wednesday, members of a UAE assassination squad arrived in al-Ghaydah. The same squad is thought to be responsible for the assassination of 27 religious leaders in Yemen who opposed the Saudi-led occupation.
Saudi Arabia has also launched a campaign to recruit hundreds of al-Mahrah’s young for a local security force, called the “Mahri Elite Forces” and modeled around other Coalition-backed mercenary forces operating in Yemen, including the Hadhrami Elite Forces in Hadhramaut province, the Shabwani Elite Forces in Shabwa, and the Pioneer Security Belt Forces (al-Hizam) brigades in Aden.
The campaign has sparked dismay amongst al-Mahrah’s tribes, who held a meeting and issued a subsequent statement on Monday saying: “Trying to copy the bad experience of the security belts in Aden and transfer them to al-Mahrah would open the way for armed conflicts and undermine local authorities.” The tribes called on the young Mahrahis to refuse to join the Saudi forces, saying the creation of the paramilitary group would create a combustible environment that threatens to upset the local balance.
Like many paramilitary forces created by the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen, the Mahri Elite Force was formed by recruiting members from specific tribes, not on the basis of one national army for the country as a whole. The predictable impact has been to exacerbate tribal differences, revive the desire for revenge among tribes, and create the desire for separate states. Al-Huraizy said in a statement:
The UAE seeks through its armed formations to create a new situation that will enable the UAE to dominate Yemen, control its ports and capabilities, and rob the national decision, violate its sovereignty and bring the country into chaos.”
Saudi Arabia’s policies in eastern Yemen lack a realistic reading of dangers and consequences, according to Abaad Studies and Research Center, a Yemeni research center closely aligned with Saudi Coalition allies in the country. As Saudi Arabia dismantles traditional social structures, ideological systems, and political parties, militia alternatives have predictably emerged.
Top Photo | Mercenaries allied with the Saudi-led coalition are pictured at the port of Aden in Aden, Yemen, Dec. 12, 2018. Jon Gambrell | AP
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
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* Hetzelfde geldt voor de situatie in Venezuela, ondanks dat de situatie in Venezuela niet is te vergelijken wat betreft doden en verdere ellende in Jemen, doet men of het in Venezuela om veel ernstiger zaken gaat, alweer een leugen van gigantische proporties (terwijl de VS één op één verantwoordelijk is voor de situatie in Venezuela….)…… **De Houthi’s, de sjiitische rebellen, die eerder IS en Al Qaida met succes bestreden in Jemen….. De huidige juntaleider van Jemen is Al-Hadi, die eerder opstapte daar de Houthi’s hem tot aftreden dwongen. Saoedi-Arabië dwong hem zijn presidentschap weer op te nemen, zodat hij hen te hulp kon roepen in de strijd tegen de Houthi’s….. Al-Hadi was de schoft die Al Qaida en IS onderdak gaf in Jemen, waarna dit geteisem begon met haar strijd tegen de sjiieten, die zelfs niet veilig waren in hun moskeeën….. Over die aanvallen was het ook behoorlijk stil in het westen, vergelijk dat eens met reactie in die media na de terreuraanval op de 2 moskeeën in Christchurch….. Zie ook: ‘Saoedische ambassadeur bij VN geeft Iran schuld van genocide in Jemen‘
De show van Stephen Colbert is een propaganda orgaan voor de rechtse democraten en is dat in feite al heel lang. Daarmee staat Colbert ook achter de illegale oorlogen die onder de democratische ‘vredesduif’ Obama werden aangegaan, dit onder regie van zijn rechterhand destijds Hillary Clinton (minister van BuZa), een oorlogsmisdadiger van formaat…..
Colbert had onlangs de democraat Tulsi Gabbard in zijn show en in tegenstelling tot de omgang met andere politici van de Democratische Partij, was dit geen gesprek met opgeklopte ‘humor’.
Colbert probeerde Gabbard zelfs in het kamp te duwen van fascist David Duke (voormalig Ku Klux Klan top), en dat van rechtse rotzakken als Steve Bannon en Matt Gaetz……
Wat betreft de illegale oorlogen van de VS, liet Colbert ten overvloede in zijn gesprek met Gabbard blijken dat hij die volledig steunt, ondanks het enorme aantal doden en landen die in puin achterblijven als de VS klaar is met haar grootschalige terreur tegen in feite de bevolking van de landen die het illegaal aanvalt…..
Ook de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen het bewind van Assad kwam ter sprake, waar Gabbard Colbert fijntjes liet weten dat de CIA in 2011 de ‘opstand’ tegen Assad heeft georganiseerd en geregisseerd en dat de oorlog van de VS in dat land niet gericht was tegen IS, maar tegen het bewind van Assad, waar ze ook de wapenleveringen aan terreurgroepen als IS en militaire training door de VS aan die terreurgroepen noemde…..
Jammer dat ze Assad wel een dictator noemt, terwijl hij met grote meerderheid democratisch tot president werd verkozen in 2014, een verkiezing die door internationale waarnemers als eerlijk en goed werd beoordeeld……
Vergeet voorts niet dat onder Assad alle geloven hand in hand naast elkaar leefden, een zaak die door handelingen van de VS bijna de nek werd omgedraaid…. Gelukkig leven de teruggekeerde vluchtelingen, in de gebieden die door het reguliere Syrische leger worden gecontroleerd, weer vreedzaam naast elkaar, ongeacht het geloof dat men aanhangt……
Helaas voor Colbert, maar hij is geen partij voor Gabbard die hem flink bij de lurven had >> lezen en zien mensen!!
Hawaii Congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where instead of the light, jokey banter about politics and who she is as a person that Democratic presidential candidates normally encounter on late night comedy programs, the show’s host solemnly ran down a list of textbook beltway smears against Gabbard and made her defend them in front of his audience.
Normally when a Democratic Party-aligned politician appears on such a show, you can expect jokes about how stupid Trump is and how badly they’re going to beat the Republicans, how they’re going to help ordinary Americans, and maybe some friendly back-and-forth about where they grew up or something. Colbert had no time to waste on such things, however, because this was not an interview with a normal Democratic Party-aligned politician: this was a politician who has been loudly and consistently criticizing US foreign policy.
After briefly asking his guest who she is and why she’s running for president, Colbert jumped right into it by immediately bringing up Syria and Assad, the primary line of attack employed against Gabbard by establishment propagandists in American mainstream media.
Colbert: Do you think the Iraq war was worth it?
Gabbard: No.
Colbert: Do you think that our involvement in Syria has been worth it?
Gabbard: No.
Colbert: Do you think that ISIS could have been defeated without our involvement and without our support of the local troops there?
Gabbard: There are two things we need to address in Syria. One is a regime change war that was first launched by the United States in 2011, covertly, led by the CIA. That is a regime change war that has continued over the years, that has increased the suffering of the Syrian people, and strengthened groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, because the CIA was using American taxpayer dollars to provide arms and training and equipment to these terrorist groups to get them to overthrow the government. So that is a regime change war that we should not have been engaging.
Colbert: So, but if it is someone like Bashar al-Assad, who gasses his own people, or who engages in war crimes against his own people, should the United States not be involved?
Gabbard: The United States should not be intervening to overthrow these dictators and these regimes that we don’t like, like Assad, like Saddam Hussein, like Gaddafi, and like Kim Jong Un. There are bad people in the world, but history has shown us that every time the United States goes in and topples these dictators we don’t like, trying to end up like the world’s police, we end up increasing the suffering of the people in these countries. We end up increasing the loss of life, but American lives and the lives of people in these countries. We end up undermining our own security, what to speak of the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money that’s spent on these wars that we need to be using right here at home.
Like I said, this is not a normal presidential candidate. How often do you see a guest appear on a network late night talk show and talk about the CIA arming terrorists in Syria and the fact that US military interventionism is completely disastrous? It just doesn’t happen. You can understand, then, why empire propagandist Stephen Colbert spent the rest of the interview informing his TV audience that Tulsi Gabbard is dangerous and poisonous.
This was unwatchable. Colbert just went down the list of scripted Gabbard smears (Assad, David Duke) then sermonized about how US military intervention is a force for good in this world. All without telling a single joke. Late night “comedy” shows are propaganda for livestock.
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳added,
Suzann@cmputrwiz
Colbert twice interjected the State Dept.’s line about the alleged Assad chemical attack on his own people; Tulsi then corrected him saying several of the groups, including al Qaeda & ISIS, had been trained by the US and had been reported as being a part of those alleged chemical https://twitter.com/DraftTulsi/status/1105323025489121280…
3:33 PM – 12 Mar 2019
Colbert: You got some heat for meeting with Bashar al-Assad. Do you not consider him a war criminal? Why did you meet with that man?
Gabbard: In the pursuit of peace and security. If we are not willing to meet with adversaries, potential adversaries, in the pursuit of peace and security, the only alternative is more war. That’s why I took that meeting with Assad. In pursuit of peace and security.
Colbert: Do you believe he is a war criminal? Do you believe he gassed his own people or committed atrocities against his own people?
Gabbard: Yes. Reports have shown that that’s a fact.
Colbert: So you believe the intelligence agencies on that. Because I head that you did not necessarily believe those reports.
The reason I call Colbert a propagandist and not simply a liberal empire loyalist who happens to have been elevated by billionaire media is because these are carefully constructed narratives that he is reciting, and they weren’t constructed by him.
Trying to make it look to the audience as though Gabbard is in some way loyal to Assad has been a high-priority agenda of the mainstream media ever since she announced her presidential candidacy.
We saw it in her recent appearance on The View, where John McCain’s sociopathic daughter called her an “Assad apologist” and demanded that Gabbard call Assad an enemy of the United States. We saw it in her recent CNN town hall, where a consultant who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign was presented as an ordinary audience member to help CNN’s Dana Bash paint Gabbard’s skepticism of intelligence reports about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government as something that is weird and suspicious, instead of the only sane position in a post-Iraq invasion world. We saw it in her appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month, where the entire panel piled on her in outrage that she wouldn’t call Assad an enemy of the United States. It’s such a common propaganda talking point that the New York Times‘ Bari Weiss famously made a laughingstock of herself by repeating it as self-evident truth on The Joe Rogan Experience without having the faintest clue what specific facts it was meant to refer to, just because she’d heard establishment pundits saying it so much.
This is an organized smear by the mass media attempting to marry Gabbard in the eyes of the public to a Middle Eastern leader whom the propagandists have already sold as a child-murdering monster, and Colbert is participating in it here just as much as the serious news media talking heads are. It’s been frustrating to watch Gabbard fold to this smear campaign by acting like it’s an established fact that Assad “gases his own people” and not the hotly contested empire-serving narrative she knows it is.
Gabbard is being targeted by this smear because she challenges US political orthodoxy on military violence (the glue which holds the empire together), so no amount of capitulation will keep them from trying to prevent the public from trusting her words.
(de video in het volgende Twitterbericht kan ik niet overnemen, zie hiervoor het origineel)
The journalist interrogating Tulsi seems to believe that US forces in Syria are fighting Assad. Tulsi corrects her, says those troops were deployed there to fight ISIS. These people don’t even know what’s happening in the places they want the US to occupy
“I don’t know whether America should be the policemen of the world,” Colbert said after Gabard defended her position.
“It is my opinion that we should not be,” Gabbard replied, causing Colbert to launch into a stuffy, embarrassing sermon on the virtues of interventionism and US hegemony that would make Bill Kristol blush.
“If we are not, though, nature abhors a vacuum, and if we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum. And we will step away from the world stage in a significant way that might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world in my opinion. Would you agree with that?”
Again, this is a comedy show.
Gabbard explained that in order to be a force for good in the world the United States has to actually do good, which means not raining fire upon every nation it dislikes all the time. Colbert responded by reading off his blue index card to repeat yet another tired anti-Gabbard smear.
“You’ve gotten some fans in the Trump supporter world: David Duke, Steve Bannon, and, uh, Matt, uh, Gaetz, is that his name? Matt Gaetz? What do you make of how much they like you?”
This one is particularly vile, partly because Gabbard has repeatedly and unequivocally denounced David Duke, who has a long-established and well-known history of injecting himself into the drama of high-profile conversations in order to maintain the illusion of relevance, and partly because it’s a completely irrelevant point that is brought up solely for the purpose of marrying Tulsi Gabbard’s name to a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Colbert only brought this up (and made Newsweek totally squee) because he wanted to assist in that marrying. The fact that there are distasteful ideologies which also happen to oppose US interventionism for their own reasons does not change the undeniable fact that US military interventionism is consistently disastrous and never helpful and robs the US public of resources that are rightfully theirs.
This interview was easily Colbert’s most blatant establishment rim job I’ve ever seen, surpassing even the time he corrected his own audience when they cheered at James Comey’s firing to explain to them that Comey is a good guy now and they’re meant to like him. Colbert’s show is blatant propaganda for human livestock, and the fact that this is what American “comedy” shows look like now is nauseating.
When Tulsi Gabbard first announced her candidacy I predicted that she’d have the narrative control engineers scrambling all over themselves to kill her message, and it’s been even more spectacular than I imagined. I don’t agree with everything she says and does, but by damn this woman is shaking up the establishment narrative matrix more than anybody else right now. She’s certainly keeping it interesting.
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Lee Camp de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder gepubliceerd op Truthdig en door mij overgenomen van Information Clearing House, stelt in zijn openingszin dat het niet de eerste keer is dat de VS regering en de massamedia het volk van de VS een oorlog in sleept, dan wel een staatsgreep organiseert die onherroepelijk desastreuze gevolgen zal hebben….. Die uitspraak gaat wel op voor het eufemisme van het jaar, immers de VS geschiedenis vanaf 1945 staat er bol van!*
Met een terugkijk op zijn leve ten tijde van de tweede illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Irak in 2003 en hoe hij toen de zaken bekeek, waar hij het gevoel kreeg dat de argumenten voor die oorlog niet klopten, ontleedt Camp 4 illegale oorlogen van de VS die op valse gronden werden gevoerd.
Camp begint met de Spaans-Amerikaanse oorlog, waar de reden voor een VS aanval het zinken was van oorlogsschip USS Maine in de haven van Havanna. Daarna haalt hij de Vietnam oorlog aan en het conflict in de Golf van Tonkin, waar VS oorlogsschepen ‘schoten op weersverschijnselen die ze op de radar zagen……’ Oorlogsmisdadiger Robert McNamara wist op grond van deze in feite false flag operatie**, president Johnson te bewegen de strijd tegen Noord-Vietnam te intensiveren tot een ‘totale oorlog……’ Later gaf McNamara toe dat het Golf van Tonkin incident nooit plaatsvond…… Let wel: deze oorlog kostte miljoenen het leven, deze slachtoffers werden niet alleen in Vietnam vermoord (3,8 miljoenmensen), maar ook in buurlanden Laos en Cambodja……
Vervolgens komt de oorlog tegen Irak aan bod, een illegale oorlog waarvan iedereen kan weten dat deze op basis van leugens werd aangegaan door de VS, een oorlog die intussen aan meer dan 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven heeft gekost (Camp noemt overigens een aantal van 1 miljoen Irakese slachtoffers, nogal een verschil met schattingen die in Irak werden gemaakt door deskundigen, al blijft een aantal van 1 miljoen doden, een verschrikking waar je je amper iets bij voor kan stellen….)
Camp komt als eerste (hij begint vanaf het vierde voorbeeld) met het bombarderen van Syrië. Jammer dat hij niet wijst op het feit dat de VS al in 2006 heeft besloten dat Assad weg moest, niet in de laatste plaats daar hij pijpleidingen over de grond van Syrië weigerde, gaspijpleidingen van de Golfstaten richting Zuid-Europa…… (waarmee 2 vliegen in 1 klap worden geveld, immers met dat gas zou Rusland een afzet probleem krijgen in Europa…..). De VS heeft de opstand in Syrië georganiseerd en geregisseerd, waar deze terreurentiteit gewapende figuren van buiten Syrië als provocateurs heeft ingezet tijdens die ‘opstand…’ Helaas voor de VS, maar deze keer mislukte de opzet……
Camp noemt veel meer feiten en zaken die de reguliere (massa-) media niet brengen. Het verhaal eindigt tenslotte bij Venezuela, waarover Camp o.a. vertelt dat oorlogsmisdadiger Bolton zonder blikken of blozen stelde dat de VS uit is op de enorme olievoorraad van Venezuela (de op 1 na grootste voorraad ter wereld, volgens Camp de grootste maar dat klopt m.i. niet). Deze bekentenis van Bolton werd niet eens gebracht door de massamedia, nee zij houden vol dat de arme Venezolanen geholpen moeten worden, daar het hen aan alles ontbreekt, ‘zelfs aan tandpasta…’ (zie daarvoor ook de video van Lee Camp, die onder het artikel is weergegeven, waar hij ook op de ‘honger’ in Venezuela ingaat)
Niet genoemd door Camp, maar de VN en het Rode Kruis hebben de VS terecht gewezen met haar poging humanitaire hulp te politiseren, daar deze organisaties al lang humanitaire hulp verstrekken in Venezuela, er zijn zelfs 20 keer meer humanitaire hulpgoederen in Venezuela (waaronder medicijnen) dan de VS heeft klaarstaan….. Humanitaire hulpgoederen die zoals gezegd wel medicijnen bevatten, in tegenstelling tot de humanitaire hulp uit de VS, terwijl de westerse massamedia en het grootste deel van de westerse politici in navolging van hun collega’s in de VS, dat keer op keer wel stellen……. Nota bene USAID, de organisatie die de VS zendingen gereed maakt, heeft zelf toegegeven dat zich geen medicijnen tussen die VS hulpgoederen bevinden….. Alweer een feit dat de westerse reguliere media niet hebben gemeld……
Lees het volgende artikel en zegt het ajb voort, tijd dat de massamedia ook in ons land eindelijk de waarheid brengen over Venezuela…..
We Are Being Lied Into War Again
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results
By Lee Camp
March 08, 2019 “Information Clearing House” – I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.
The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.
Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.
And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to be dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.
The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”
The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).
This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.
Number 4: The Spanish-American War
This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.
And as The New York Times noted, “[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”
I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”
Number 3: The Vietnam War
Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.
That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination. The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese. The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.
Number 2: The Iraq War
Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”
Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.
But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.
“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”
And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”
That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.
(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)
Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about warwith Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”
I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.
“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”
Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.
Number 1: The Bombing of Syria
President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.
So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.
Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.
His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”
The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.
For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.
On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.
The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America.
Jill Stein de voormalige presidentskandidaat van de Green Party in de VS, heeft in een paar punten duidelijk gemaakt dat het de VS niet gaat om ‘mensenrechtenschendingen’ of de armoede in Venezuela, dit door te wijzen op andere situaties waar de VS totaal geen problemen heeft met deze schendingen, zelfs als ze uitmonden in massamoorden……
Wat betreft armoede moet de VS zich al helemaal stilhouden, gezien de enorme armoede in dat gestolen land, waar 29 miljoen van de 40 miljoen arme mensen* niet eens een gezondheidsverzekering hebben…….
Jammer dat Stein alleen terzijde in een Twitterbericht wijst op het feit dat het de VS gaat om olie, terwijl Venezuela de op één na grootste olievoorraad ter wereld bezit, waar Venezuela ook nog eens de beschikking over heeft over een grote hoeveelheid coltan, een grondstof die wordt gebruikt in de smartphone….. Beiden zaken waar de VS de beschikking over wil hebben…….
Als voorbeelden voor het geen probleem hebben met (fascistische) dictaturen of andere rechtse regimes, noemt Stein Colombia en Honduras, die worden gesteund door de VS (waar de VS zelfs verantwoordelijk is voor de coup van 2009 in Honduras….)…. Weer een misser, waarom niet wijzen op het feit dat de VS de Saoedische terreurcoalitie steunt bij het uitvoeren van een genocide in Jemen?? Een zaak waar de wereld echt van op de kop zou moeten staan, i.p.v. de gebeurtenissen in Venezuela, NB één op één het gevolg van de economische oorlog die de VS al jaren voert tegen dit land!!!
Wel een goed voorbeeld van Stein is het met enorm veel geweld neerslaan van protesten tegen het neoliberalisme door arme Venezolanen in 1989…… Protesten die de naam Caracazo meekregen, protesten waarbij het destijds fascistische regime een enorme slachting heeft aangericht, waarvan de naar schatting 300 tot 3.000 slachtoffers in massagraven werden gedumpt…… Caracazo was de aanloop naar de grootste slachting uit de Venezolaanse geschiedenis, aldus de schrijver Ed Sykes van het hieronder opgenomen artikel van The Canary.
Stein zegt dat de VS totaal geen moeite had met deze slachting 30 jaar geleden in Venezuela en de andere kant opkeek (vergelijk dit eens met de houding van de VS nu…), terwijl Stein stelt dat de VS rechtse (en ronduit fascistische, Ap) regimes steunt, ziet ze blijkbaar niet dat de VS ook voor deze slachting in Venezuela haar toestemming en wellicht zelfs advies heeft gegeven aan de dictatuur hoe e.e.a. aan te pakken……
Stein slaat de plank nog eens mis, door te wijzen op de arme Venezolanen die geen eten zouden hebben en in het vuilnis naar voedsel zoeken, iets waar ze terecht over zegt dat dit in de VS veelvuldig gebeurt….. De beelden over honger en andere ellende in Venezuela zijn onderdeel van de anti-Maduro propaganda…… Uiteraard zijn er zware tekorten, echter al een paar maanden zijn het Rode Kruis en de VN bezig met humanitaire hulp in Venezuela, dit met een hoeveelheid humanitaire hulpgoederen die bewezen niet in de schaduw kan staan van wat de VS klaar heeft staan over de grens van Venezuela en Brazilië……. (20 keer zoveel!)
Terecht stelt Stein dat de VS de grote tekorten in Venezuela heeft veroorzaakt, waar ze wijst op de huidige sancties, intussen overgenomen door o.a. Canada en de EU……. Alweer jammer dat Stein niet meldt dat de VS al voor de sancties bezig was met een boycot van Venezuela wat betreft levensmiddelen en medicijnen, ook al was deze boycot niet officieel, is het al lang duidelijk dat e.e.a. heeft plaatsgevonden….. Zo heeft Hillary Clinton, als minister van BuZa onder ‘vredesduif’ Obama, de VS supermarktketens met winkels in Venezuela onder druk gezet de voorraden niet of anders mondjesmaat aan te vullen, waar ze de grote farmaceuten onder druk zette hetzelfde te doen met medicijnleveringen voor Venezuela……
Het Canary artikel is wel degelijk van belang daar op een aantal hypocriete zaken wordt gewezen, zoals het aanhalen van de opstand in 1989 en bijvoorbeeld de uitlating van de VN dat de VS sancties verantwoordelijk zijn voor de doden die in Venezuela zijn gevallen…… Jammer dat niet wordt aangegeven dat de doden door de sancties, de chronisch zieken en terminaal zieken zijn, aangevuld met heel jonge slachtoffers, alles door gebrek aan medicijnen…..
Wat een gemiste kans niet even te wijzen op het feit dat dezelfde VN en het Rode Kruis beiden de VS veroordeelden voor het tot een politiek drukmiddel maken van humanitaire hulp, terwijl deze organisaties zoals gezegd allang volop humanitaire hulp verstrekken binnen de grenzen van Venezuela……
Met haar pleidooi geeft Stein de anti-propaganda van de VS en de reguliere westerse massamedia deels gelijk, anders kan ik het niet zien….. Nogmaals: het artikel is verder belangrijk genoeg om te belichten, daar er wel degelijk wordt gewezen op het schunnige beleid van de VS (en andere westerse landen) tegen in feite het Venezolaanse volk……
Wel mooi dat Stein in feite in 2 punten weergeeft hoe hypocriet de VS bezig is.
Jill Stein clobbers US warhawks with a perfect takedown of their regime-change propaganda
Former US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has been on fire recently. In particular, she’s been putting the mainstream US left to shame with her vocal opposition to the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela. This week, on the 30th anniversary of a notorious massacre by a US-backed government in the country, she had a perfect takedown of US warhawks. And we should all listen to her.
When the US turned a blind eye to Venezuela’s biggest massacre
As author George Ciccariello-Maher pointed out on 27 February:
30 years ago today in Venezuela: the mass rebellion against neoliberalism known as the Caracazo, which ended in the massacre of 300 to 3,000, most dumped in mass graves. Today, neoliberals claim the mantle of human rights as they try to do the same. Never forget!
And Stein spread that message. In particular, she stressed how Washington ignored the Caracazo (Venezuela’s biggest massacre in the 20th century) just like it ignores the dire situations in Colombia and Honduras today:
30 years ago Venezuela’s neoliberal gov’t brutally crushed a poor people’s uprising. US ignored it, just like it ignores political prisoners, targeted killings, & humanitarian crises in right-wing states like Colombia & Honduras. US cares about #Venezuela‘s oil, NOT human rights.
Colombia and Honduras, of course, are US allies. Venezuela, on the other hand, isn’t. And Washington has a long history of boosting far-right allies in Latin America while opposing anyone on the left.
Seriously, Washington? Stop taking the piss.
US political elites have been obsessing over Venezuela’s crisis for weeks now. They’ve also been tightening their chokehold on Venezuela’s economy with more and more sanctions. As a former UN expert toldThe Canary this week:
the sanctions are the direct cause of death… they constitute a crime against humanity
Stein isn’t falling for the warhawks’ propaganda and phoney concern, though. Instead, she’s been pointing out that these same elites have done precious nothing to end crises raging at home:
Isn’t it weird that Trump hasn’t done a thing to help 40M Americans in poverty, 29M without health insurance, 500K living on the streets, or entire cities without clean water… but suddenly he cares so much about humanitarian aid to #Venezuela that he’s willing to start a war?
Republicans seem concerned about a video of people in #Venezuela eating from the garbage. Strange – they’ve never done a thing to help over 500K homeless Americans! But if they really want to help Venezuelans, why not lift sanctions The Economist admitted will lead to starvation?
Isn’t it strange that Trump wants to ram through #Venezuela‘s border to “bring humanitarian aid to desperate people”, while his party wants to prosecute Americans who give water to refugees at our border? Almost like their “humanitarian aid” is just an excuse to incite a war.
Stein has brilliantly cut through the bullshit that US warhawks have been spewing for weeks now. And she’s exposed and stressed two key points:
That Washington picks and chooses which foreign crises to get angry about, usually depending on whether the local governments are allies or not.
That Washington waxes lyrical about poverty abroad, but does next to nothing to address the crisis of poverty and inequality at home.
They’re points that we all need to remember. And they’re points we need to be throwing back into the face of anyone who’s calling for illegal regime-change efforts in Venezuela.
=========================================== *Het aantal van 40 miljoen arme VS burgers aan de lage kant, gezien het aantal burgers in de VS dat afhankelijk is van voedselbonnen, dat waren er een paar jaar geleden nog rond de 50 miljoen en dit aantal is sindsdien allesbehalve gedaald…….
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
De kop van dit bericht is een heel andere dan die van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, waar Caitlin Johnstone in feite een stelling betrekt: ‘Yes Moscow Boosts Western Anti-Imperialist Voices. So What?’
In haar artikel, geplaatst op haar eigen site stelt Johnstone dat de VS precies hetzelfde doet, hoewel daar aan toegevoegd moet worden dat de anti-Russische propaganda voor het overgrote deel niet wordt ondersteund door feiten, terwijl de anti-imperialistische berichtgeving voor het overgrote deel niet eens moeite hoeft te doen om met feiten aan te tonen dat de VS de internationale stabiliteit steeds verder ondermijnt, daar de bewijzen overweldigend zijn……
Het lullige is dat elke kritiek bijvoorbeeld over de feiten aangaande de VS terreur in het Midden-Oosten, in de VS en de rest van het westen worden afgedaan als pro-Russische propaganda, zo worden de sociale media die hier aandacht aan besteden, zoals RT (Russia Today) weggezet als Russische trollen…..
Johnstone noemt het niet in haar artikel, maar The Voice of America is een zender die vooral propaganda maakt voor het imperialisme waar de VS intussen al vele jaren meer dan berucht door is geworden en waar men Rusland consequent als een kwaadaardige natie neerzet……. Uiteraard wordt dit voorgesteld als het brengen van democratie en stabiliteit door de VS, waar ditgestolen land in werkelijkheid massamoord en vernietiging brengt, ter illustratie >> sinds 1945 heeft de VS meer dan 22,5 miljoen mensen vermoord*:
in diverse illegale oorlogen
bij door de VS georganiseerde opstanden waarvoor de VS o.a. economische oorlogsvoering gebruikt
bij door de VS georganiseerde staatsgrepen
bij geheime militaire missies van de VS
bij moordaanslagen van de CIA en bij standrechtelijke executies van verdachten middels drones, waarbij meer dan 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens werd verdacht
Overigens: de grootste manipulators van verkiezingen in de VS zijn grote bedrijven die met hun macht en enorme kapitaal in feite politici en verkiezingsuitslagen kopen, ofwel grootscheepse corruptie, waarmee de democratie met voeten wordt getreden…… (de VS democratie heeft in feite plaats gemaakt voor een politiestaat, waarop de grote bedrijven grote invloed uitoefenen, grote bedrijven waaronder de bankenmaffia, oliemaatschappijen en wapenfabrikanten….. Opvallend dat grote bedrijven het altijd goed kunnen vinden met dictaturen, althans zolang ze niet zogenaamd links zijn….) Conclusie van Johnstone is dat Rusland in feite hetzelfde doet als de VS, ware het niet dat de sociale mediaorganen die worden beschuldigd de stem van het Kremlin te vertolken, i.t.t. tot de reguliere westerse media, wel echt nieuws brengen en durven in te gaan tegen de neoliberale status quo en de oorlogszuchtige stemming die zo wordt verdedigd en zelfs uitgedragen in die westerse media…….
Yes, Moscow Boosts Western Anti-Imperialist Voices. So What?
In an extremely weird article titled “Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials“, CNN reports that Facebook has suspended popular dissident media outlet In The Now and its allied pages for failing to publicly “disclose” its financial ties to a subsidiary of RT. According to CNN, such disclosures are not and have never been an actual part of Facebook’s official policy, but Facebook has made the exceptional precondition of public disclosure of financial ties in order for In The Now to return to its platform.
I say the article is extremely weird for a number of reasons. Firstly, according to In The Now CEO Anissa Naouai, CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform.
Secondly, the article reports that CNN found out about Maffick’s financial ties thanks to a tip-off from the German Marshall Fund, a narrative control firm which receives funding from the US government. In The Now‘s Rania Khalek has described this tactic as “a case where the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world.”
Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is.
Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials
Three online video channels designed to appeal to millennials have collected tens of millions of views on Facebook since September. But the pages pushing the videos do not disclose that they are…
cnn.com
The article repeatedly mentions the fact that all the people working for In The Now “claim” to be editorially independent as opposed to being told what to report by Kremlin officials, a notion which Khalek says was met with extreme skepticism when she was interviewed for the piece by CNN. As though the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them.
Check out the following excerpt, for example of this bizarre attitude:
“Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told CNN that while Russian state-backed outlets claim to be editorially independent, ‘they routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which portray the West negatively.’
“Nimmo said the tone of Maffick’s pages is ‘broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That’s strikingly similar to RT’s output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.’”
This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we’re seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today: that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually “boosting the Kremlin narrative”. If you say it in an assertive and authoritative tone like Mr Nimmo does, it can sound like a perfectly reasonable position if you don’t think about it too hard. If you really look at it directly, though, what these manipulators are actually saying is “Russia opposes western interventionism, therefore anyone who opposes western interventionism is basically Russian.”
Which is of course a total non-argument. You don’t get to just say “Russia bad” for two years to get everyone riled up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and then say “That’s Russian!” at anything you don’t like. That’s not a thing. More to the point, though, there is no causal relationship between the fact that Russia opposes western interventionism and the fact that many westerners do.
As we discussed recently, there will necessarily be inadvertent agreement between Russia and westerners who oppose western interventionism, because Russia, like so many other sovereign nations, opposes western interventionism. If you discover that an American who opposes US warmongering and establishment politics is saying the same things as RT, that doesn’t mean you’ve discovered a shocking conspiracy between western dissidents and the Russian government, it means people who oppose the same things oppose the same things.
Something appears fishy with conservative columnist running smears on behalf of a “Russian troll hunter” about an open pro-Bernie subreddit before the man even announces he’s running.
Prominent pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern aims to divide Democrats,
Something appears fishy with WayOfTheBern, a prominent Reddit page dedicated to advancing the prospects of Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, according to experts who track political social media.
washingtontimes.com
We’re seeing this absurd gibberish spouted over and over again by the mainstream media now. The other day the delightful pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern was smeared as a Russian operation by the Washington Times, not because the Washington Times had any evidence anywhere supporting that claim, but because the subreddit’s members are hostile to Democratic presidential hopefuls other than Sanders, and because its posts “consistently support positions that would be amenable to the Kremlin.” All this means is that the subreddit is full of people who support Bernie Sanders and oppose US government malfeasance, yet an entire article was published in a mainstream outlet treating this as something dangerous and suspicious.
If you really listen to what the CNNs and Ben Nimmos and Washington Timeses are actually trying to tell you, what they’re saying is that it’s not okay for anyone to oppose any part of the unipolar world order or the establishment which runs it. Never ever, under any circumstances. Don’t work for a media outlet that’s funded by the Russian government even though no mainstream outlets will ever platform you. Don’t even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies.
“If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I’ll gladly accept,” Khalek told me when asked for comment. “But the corporate media doesn’t allow antiwar voices a platform. In The Now does. I’ve worked for dozens of different outlets, from Vice to Al Jazeera to RT, and my message has always the same: leftist, antiwar and pro justice and equality. People should be asking why US mainstream media outlets that claim to be free and independent refuse to air critical and adversarial voices like mine.”
Why indeed? Actually, if CNN is so worried about Russian media influence in America, all they’d have to do is put on a few shows featuring leftist, antiwar and pro-justice voices and that would be the end of it. They could easily out-spend RT by a massive margin, buy up all the talent like Khalek, Lee Camp and Chris Hedges, put on a sleek, high-budget show and steal RT America’s audience, killing it dead and drawing all anti-establishment energy to their material.
But they don’t. They don’t, and they never will. Because Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That’s what they’re really trying to eliminate.
I did an interview with RT’s Going Underground yesterday on UK foreign policy since 1945, to broadcast Monday. Why? I’ve waited since 1989 when I was at Chatham House to be interviewed by BBC; the call has never come. So I gave my first interview to RT. (PS. I don’t love Putin).
So yes, Moscow will of course elevate some western voices who oppose the power establishment that is trying to undermine and subvert Russia. Those voices will not require any instruction to speak out against that establishment, since that’s what they’d be doing anyway and they’re just grateful to finally have a platform upon which to speak. And it is good that they’re getting a platform to speak. If western power structures have a problem with it, they should stop universally refusing to platform anyone who opposes the status quo that is destroying nations abroad and squeezing the life out of citizens at home.
It doesn’t take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines. Sometimes Russia will come in and give them a platform in the void that has been left by the mainstream outlets which are doing everything they can to silence them. So what? The alternative is all dissident voices being silenced. The fact that Russia prevents a few of them from being silenced is not the problem. The problem is that they are being silenced at all. —————————————-
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‘Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht…………‘ (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende artikelen: ‘Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie‘ en ‘Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary‘)
In een vergadering over de politiek ten aanzien van Venezuela heeft Democratisch congreslid* Ilhan Omar het oorlogsmonster Abrams het vel over de oren getrokken. Abrams is de oorlogsmisdadiger die is aangesteld door de Trump administratie om de VS acties tegen de democratisch gekozen president van Venezuela te coördineren als speciaal gezant voor de VS…… Abrams is bekend van zijn bloedig acties tegen voormalige regeringen in Latijns-Amerika en het in stand houden van dictaturen die de VS welgevallig waren, zo is de schoft mede verantwoordelijk voor een genocide in Guatemala en voorts in diverse Latijns-Amerikaanse landen: moord, verkrachtingen, martelingen en ontvoeringen………
Lees en zie (video) hoe Omar Abrams op een geweldige manier te kakken zet en zie de smerige reacties van schoften die achter Abrams staan. Abrams zou nu een mensenrechtenactivist zijn, althans als je het geteisem moet geloven, dat dit gelul van een dronken aardbei is, blijkt wel uit het feit dat de Trump administratie deze smerige schoft heeft aangesteld om de coup in Venezuela in de juiste VS banen te leiden…….. Moet je nagaan, het voorgaande nadat de VS de laatste 10 jaar het volk van Venezuela steeds dieper in de ellende heeft gestort met een smerige economische oorlog……..
Overigens was Omar onlangs al in opspraak over haar uitlatingen t.a.v. AIPAC**
(CJ Opinion) — Days after being smashed with a vicious establishment smear campaign to paint her as an antisemite for accurately criticizing AIPAC, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is already back on the horse aggressively disrupting the establishment narrative matrix that our rulers have worked so hard to construct for us.
Elliott Abrams is a monster. The atrocities that he has facilitated, covered up and whitewashed in Panama, El Salvador, Gaza, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Iraq are utterly unforgivable, and the fact that he has been appointed as special envoy to Venezuela by the Trump administration completely invalidates the US government’s Venezuela narrative all by itself. Even without the blatant lies, the known oil agendas, the CIA ops, the mounting evidence of US arms smuggling to right-wing militias, and America’s extensive history of utterly disastrous regime change interventionism, the fact that this administration would appoint such a ghoulish individual to spearhead its Venezuela interventionism alone is enough to show you that the US government has nothing but malevolent intentions for that nation.
So it was nice to see someone in that government calling him what he is right to his face in front of everybody.
At a House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) hearing on US Venezuela policy, Abrams was presented with the only line of questioning that is appropriate for such a beast by the very congresswoman the Democrats threw to the wolves just two days ago. Someone had to do it, and they left it to Ilhan Omar.
“In 1991, you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush,” Omar accurately stated. “I fail to understand why members of this committee, or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”
“If I could respond to that-” Abrams began.
“That wasn’t a question,” Omar responded, cutting him off.
“It was an attack! It was an attack!” Abrams exclaimed, visibly upset.
“I reserve the right to my time,” said Omar.
“It is not right that members of this Committee can attack a witness who is not permitted to reply,” Abrams said, talking over Omar.
“That was not a question; thank you for your participation,” Omar continued. “On February 8th, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about US foreign policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda a report about the massacre of El Mozote of which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as two years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping 12 year-old girls before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a ‘fabulous achievement.’ Yes or no, do you still think so?”
“From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy,” Abrams said angrily. “That’s a fabulous achievement.”
“Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?” Omar asked.
“That is a ridiculous question and I will not respond to it,” Abrams replied. “I’m sorry Mr. Chairman, I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack which is not a question.”
“I will take that as a yes,” Omar said. “Yes or no, would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide if you believe they were serving US interests as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua?”
“I’m not going to respond to that question,” Abrams again answered. “I’m sorry, I don’t think this entire line of questioning is meant to be real questions, and so I will not reply.”
“Whether under your watch a genocide will take place, and you will look the other way because American interests were being upheld is a fair question,” Omar said. “Because the American people want to know that any time we engage a country that we think about what our actions could be and how we believe our values are being furthered. That is my question: Will you make sure that human rights are not violated and that we uphold international and human rights?”
“I suppose there is a question in there, and the answer is that the entire thrust of American policy in Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people’s effort to restore democracy to their country,” Abrams responded. “That’s our policy.”
“I don’t think anybody disputes that,” Omar said. “The question I had for you is that does the interests of the United States include protecting human rights and include protecting people against genocide?”
“That is always the position of the United States,” Abrams lied.
“Thank you,” concluded Omar. “I yield back the rest of my time.”
There is no legitimate reason for Elliott Abrams to ever find himself before a group of people who are ostensibly concerned with accountability and responsibility without being asked such questions. But that didn’t stop all the world’s worst people from crawling out of the woodwork to his defense.
“Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams,” tweeted Iraq-raping neocon Max Boot. “She doesn’t seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy — not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about.”
I worked for Elliott Abrams as a civil servant,” tweeted Kelly Magsamen, Vice President of National Security for the plutocrat-backed liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP). “He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We all have a lot of work to do together in Venezuela. We share goals.”
“I am not greatly sympathetic to Rep. Omar (surprise surprise),” tweetedNational Review senior editor and former George W Bush speech writer Jay Nordlinger. “But really, someone ought to have given her a clue who Elliott Abrams is. The guy has been championing freedom and human rights his entire life (and taking unholy sh** for it from the illiberal Left and Right).”
Conservative pundit Michael Knowles tossed his two cents into the campaign to purge the concept of antisemitism of any meaning by tweeting, “One wonders why @IlhanMN seems to harbor such particular contempt for Elliott¹ Abrams² (¹ from the Hebrew ‘Elijah,’ meaning ‘My God is Yahweh’ ² the father of the Jewish people).”
This is the bipartisan establishment orthodoxy that is guiding your foreign policy, America. One which claims Elliott Abrams is a saint, which claims criticism of US warmongering is antisemitic, and which throws a bold Somali-American woman under the bus for speaking the truth after years of paying lip service to the need to get more women of color elected to the leadership of the Democratic Party. This whole Abrams incident happened, by the way, at the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deleted a tweet in which he accidentally acknowledged the agenda to start a war with Iran, but you probably won’t see Omar commenting on this because she knows she’ll be smeared as an antisemite for it.
US warmongering is the most aggressively protected part of the establishment narrative matrix, because US warmongering is the glue that holds the unipolar empire together. Without it, our rulers cannot rule, so you’ll see imperial lackeys fiercely attacking anyone who draws attention to America’s bloodbaths around the world, even if they are good servants of the empire in other areas.
The difficulty for our rulers, though, is that warmongering is a very difficult thing to paint a pretty picture of, especially with our newfound ability to quickly share ideas and information around the globe. I mean, look at Elliott Abrams. Seriously, just watch him talk. That demonic grimace is the prettiest face they could find to put on their Venezuela agenda. I find that very encouraging.
The reason they work so hard to manufacture our consent for warmongering agendas is because they need that consent. They wouldn’t propagandize us so aggressively if they didn’t need us all trusting them and believing their stories, so the best way to fight establishment warmongering is to circulate disbelief in their stories. Whenever you see someone like Ilhan Omar drawing attention to the gaping plot holes in agendas like regime change interventionism in Venezuela, go ahead and help draw attention to it.
Things are only shitty because a few extremely powerful people do very shitty things. The only reason powerful people get away with doing very shitty things is because the majority allows them to. The majority only allows them to because they’ve been propagandized to. The weakest link in this chain is the propaganda. Attack there.
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
De westerse reguliere media gingen in een nog hogere hysterie versnelling toen vorige week werd gemeld dat Maduro humanitaire hulp uit de VS zou hebben geblokkeerd voor invoer in het land. Maduro zou dit hebben gedaan om aan het bewind te kunnen blijven en deze ‘paranoïde tiran’ zou liever z’n bevolking uithongeren dan voedsel uit de VS het land binnen te laten…..
Uiteraard ziet de werkelijkheid er zoals gewoonlijk totaal anders uit, zo hebben de VN en het Rode Kruis laten weten dat het hier om een PR stunt van de VS gaat……. Zo is de veel getoonde geblokkeerde brug, een foto deel uitmakend van het opgeklopte verhaal van de Trump administratie, de brug waar de hulpgoederen zouden worden tegengehouden, is een brug van weinig betekenis in deze, sterker nog: deze brug is al jaren gesloten……. Nog sterker, volgens een opiniestuk in de La Opinion is deze in 2015 afgebouwde brug nooit in gebruik genomen……
Bovendien, de persoon die verantwoordelijk is voor dergelijke transporten uit de VS, is in het verleden meermaals door de mand gevallen als wapenhandelaar, dus onder het mom van het brengen van humanitaire noodhulp werden er met deze transporten vooral wapens geleverd……
Echter het belangrijkst is wel het feit dat het Rode Kruis en de VN beiden de VS hebben gewaarschuwd niet door te gaan met deze (belachelijke) PR stunt. Niet voor niets, daar de VN en het Rode Kruis veelal zendingen van humanitaire goederen verzorgen en op deze manier politiek bedrijven zal het werk van deze hulporganisaties in de toekomst alleen maar verder bemoeilijken… Bovendien hebben (internationale) hulporganisaties niet gevraagd om aanvullende hulp van de VS….
Om de werkelijkheid nog verder te benadrukken: de Venezolaanse autoriteiten helpen hulporganisaties met de verspreiding van hulpgoederen, goederen waarvoor het Rode Kruis het hulpbudget onlangs verdubbelde en tevreden is over de medewerking van het Maduro regime…….
Hoe is het mogelijk dat de reguliere media zover meegaan in het verdraaien van feiten? Is men er zo van overtuigd de meerderheid van de bevolking te kunnen overtuigen van leugens en halve waarheden, dat men de smerige buitenlandpolitiek van de VS helpt uitdragen…??? Een cliché op deze plek intussen, maar de vraag stellen is haar beantwoorden: inderdaad!! Je liegt, verzwijgt zaken en draait met je collega’s de waarheid op zo’n manier dat het volk de leugens en andere desinformatie gelooft…….. Elke kritiek op die valse berichtgeving, ook al wordt dit gedaan middels feitenmateriaal, wordt door die media (gesteund door politici) afgedaan als ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws) en desinformatie…….
Lees het volgende artikel van Adam Johnson, eerder gepubliceerd op FAIR.org, door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media en geeft het door, schudt de wereld wakker voordat een volgend land volkomen naar god wordt geholpen door de VS (met de steun van NAVO troepen [dus ook met misbruik van ons belastinggeld] in Colombia, waar deze terreurorganisatie 2 militaire bases heeft):
Western Media Fall in Lockstep for Cheap Trump/Rubio Venezuela Aid PR Stunt
(FAIR) — The Trump administration’s now completely overt effort to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had a very successful public relations effort this week, as major Western media outlets uniformly echoed its simplistic, pre-packaged claim that the Venezuelan government was heartlessly withholding foreign aid:
All of the above articles—and scores more like it—repeated the same script: Maduro was blocking aid from the US “out of refusal to relinquish power,” preferring to starve “his own people” rather than feed them. It’s a simple case of good and evil—of a tyrannical, paranoid dictator not letting in aid to feed a starving population.
Except three pieces of key context are missing. Context that, when presented to a neutral observer, would severely undermine the cartoonish narrative being advanced by US media.
Both the Red Cross and UN warned the US not to engage in this aid PR stunt.
The bridge in question is a visual metaphor contrived by the Trump administration of little practical relevance.
The person in charge of US operations in Venezuela has a history of using aid as a cover to deliver weapons to right-wing mercenaries.
(1) Not only has the international aid community not asked for the “aid,” earlier this week, both the International Red Cross and United Nations warned the US to explicitly not engage in these types of PR stunts. As Washington Post contributor Vincent Bevins pointed out, the transparent cynicism of these efforts was preemptively warned about by the groups actually charged with keeping starving people fed:
The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned the United States about the risks of delivering humanitarian aid to Venezuela without the approval of security forces loyal to President Nicolas Maduro.
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations warned on Wednesday against using aid as a pawn in Venezuela after the United States sent food and medicine to the country’s border and accused President Nicolas Maduro of blocking its delivery with trucks and shipping containers.
Indeed, as Bevins also noted, the Red Cross has long been working with local authorities inside Venezuela to deliver relief, and just last week doubled its budget to do so. We have ample evidence the Maduro government is more than willing to work with international aid when it’s offered in good faith, not when it’s a thinly veiled mechanism to spur civil war and contrive PR victories for those seeking to overthrow the government. It’s not just Maduro—as the Western media are presenting it—who opposes the US aid convoy; it’s the UN and Red Cross. Why do none of the above reports note this rather key piece of information, instead giving the reader the impression it’s only the stance of a sadistic, power-hungry madman?
(2) Despite dozens of media outlets giving the impression (and sometimes explicitly saying) that the Venezuelan government shut down an otherwise functioning pathway into the country, the bridge in question hasn’t been open for years.
It’s true the Venezuelan government appears to have placed an oil tanker and cargo containers on the bridge to prevent incursion from the Colombian side, but the other barriers, as writer and software developer Jason Emery noted, have been in place since at least 2016. According to La Opinion (2/5/16), after its initial construction in 2015, the bridge has never been open to traffic. How can Maduro, as the BBCsuggested, “reopen” a bridge that was never open?
The reality is BBC and other Western media were just going along with the narrative pushed by Sen. Marco Rubio and Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, not bothering to check if their primary visual narrative was based on a bad faith, context-free PR stunt.
This point is a relatively superficial one, but in a long term PR battle to win over Western liberals for further military escalation, the superficial matters a lot. Rubio and the Trump administration cooked up a gimmicky visual metaphor, and almost every outlet uncritically passed it along, often making factually inaccurate assumptions along the way—assumptions the Trump State Department and CIA coordinating the effort knew very well they would make.
(3) The Venezuelan government has an entirely rational reason to suspect the US would use humanitarian aid as a cover to smuggle in weapons to foment armed conflict: The person running quarterback for Trump on the current Venezuela operation, Elliot Abrams, literally did just that 30 years ago.
From the first two paragraphs (emphasis added) of a 1987 AP/New York Times article on Elliott Abrams, “Abrams Denies Wrongdoing in Shipping Arms to Contras” (8/17/87—h/t Kevin Gosztola):
Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams has defended his role in authorizing the shipment of weapons on a humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan rebels, saying the operation was ”strictly by the book.”
Mr. Abrams spoke at a news conference Saturday in response to statements by Robert Duemling, former head of the State Department’s Nicaraguan humanitarian assistance office, who said he had twice ordered planes to shuttle weapons for the Contras on aid planes at Mr. Abrams’ direction in early 1986.
It’s literally the same person. It’s not that Maduro is vaguely paranoid the US, in general, would dust off its 1980s’ Contra-backing Cold War playbook, or some unspecified assumption about a higher-up or two at State. It’s literally the exact same person in charge of the operation who we know—with 100 percent certainty, because he admitted to it—has a history of using aid convoys as a cover to smuggle in arms to right-wing militias.
It’s all playing out right now, in real time. The same actors, the same tricks, the same patently disingenuous concern for the starving poor. And the US media is stripping it of all this essential context, presenting these radical regime-change operators as bleeding heart humanitarians.
The same US media outlets that have expressly fundraised and run ad campaigns on their image as anti-Trump truth-tellers have mysteriously taken at face value everything the Trump White House and its neoconservative allies have said in their campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The self-aggrandizing “factchecking” brigade that emerged to confront the Trump administration is suddenly nonexistent as it rolls out a transparent, cynical PR strategy to delegitimize a Latin American government it’s trying to overthrow.
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
Op CounterPunch van 8 februari jl. een artikel van Roger Harris waarin hij een aantal zaken opvoert die duidelijk maken dat Guaidó een zetbaasje is van de VS en dat de zogenaamde afzetting van Maduro (immers op order van de VS stelde Guaidó dat hij de nieuwe president is) en een eventuele installatie van Guaidó als president volkomen tegen de Venezolaanse constitutie ingaat…….. Bovendien is Guaidó voorzitter van een kleine oppositie partij (Voluntad Popular) en niet de oppositieleider van Venezuela, zoals de reguliere media je keer op keer willen doen geloven….. Sterker nog: Guaidó zou zelfs niet tot de top van zijn partij behoren, aldus Harris, voorts zouden andere oppositiepartijen Guaidó niet steunen…..
Lees het volgende artikel en geeft het ajb door, het is van het hoogste belang dat de VS, de NAVO, de EU, Canada en een aantal Latijns Amerikaanse landen met hun handen afblijven van Venezuela…… Als het tot een inval van de VS en de NAVO in Venezuela komt, zullen veel Venezolanen het leven verliezen en gezien de agressie van de VS en haar terreurorganisatie NAVO, zal een fiks deel van Venezuela in puin worden gelegd…….
Laten de VS, Canada en de EU zich maar eens bemoeien met de genocide in Jemen en dan niet op de manier van de VS, het helpen bij die genocide, maar door de Saoedische terreurcoalitie te isoleren, te boycotten en zo te dwingen te stoppen met alweer een genocide, die het westen tegen de eerder door haarzelf gedane verklaringen in, na de genocide in Rwanda, toch laat gebeuren……
Kan het westen eindelijk ook eens Israël onder druk zetten te stoppen met de etnische zuivering van Palestijnen en te stoppen met de massamoorden op dit verdrukte volk…..
De situatie in Jemen en de Palestijnse gebieden is duizenden keren erger dan die in Venezuela en toch wil men bij de laatste, geheel hypocriet, wel ingrijpen……. Vergeet natuurlijk niet dat de situatie in Venezuela geheel te danken is aan de economische oorlog die de VS tegen dit land voerde en voert (nu met de zogenaamd gelegaliseerde hulp middels sancties van de EU…)
Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr. Guaidó, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, was exposed by Cohen and Blumenthal as “a product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers.” Argentinian sociologist Marco Teruggi described Guaidó in the same article as “a character that has been created for this circumstance” of regime change. Here, his constitutional credentials to be interim president of Venezuela are deconstructed.
Educated at George Washington University in DC, Guaidó was virtually unknown in his native Venezuela before being thrust on to the world stage in a rapidly unfolding series of events. In a poll conducted a little more than a week before Guaidó appointed himself president of the country, 81% of Venezuelans had never even heard of the 35-year-old.
To make a short story shorter, US Vice President Pence phoned Guaidó on the evening of January 22rd and presumably asked him how’d he like to be made president of Venezuela. The next day, Guaidó announced that he considered himself president of Venezuela, followed within minutes by US President Trump confirming the self-appointment.
A few weeks before on January 5, Guaidó had been installed as president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, their unicameral legislature. He had been elected to the assembly from a coastal district with 26% of the vote. It was his party’s turn for the presidency of the body, and he was hand-picked for the position. Guaidó, even within his own party, was not in the top leadership.
Guaidó’s party, Popular Will, is a far-right marginal group whose most enthusiastic boosters are John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will had adopted a strategy of regime change by extra-parliamentary means rather than engage in the democratic electoral process and had not participated in recent Venezuelan elections.
Although anointed by Trump and company, Guaidó’s Popular Will Party is not representative of the “Venezuelan opposition,” which is a fractious bunch whose hatred of Maduro is only matched by their abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate Henri Falcón, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a neoliberal austerity platform, had been vehemently opposed by Popular Will who demanded that he join their US-backed boycott of the election.
The Venezuelan news outlet, Ultimas Noticias, reported that prominent opposition politician Henrique Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013, “affirmed during an interview that the majority of opposition parties did not agree with the self-swearing in of Juan Guaidó as interim president of the country.” Claudio Fermin, president of the party Solutions for Venezuela, wrote “we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in coming to an understanding, we believe Venezuelans need to part ways with the extremist sectors that only offer hatred, revenge, lynching.” Key opposition governor of the State of Táchira, Laidy Gómez, has rejected Guaidó’s support of intervention by the US, warning that it “would generate death of Venezuelans.”
The Guaidó/Trump cabal does not reflect the democratic consensus in Venezuela, where polls consistently show super majorities oppose outside intervention. Popular opinion in Venezuela supports negotiations between the government and the opposition as proposed by Mexico, Uruguay, and the Vatican. The Maduro administration has embraced the negotiations as a peaceful solution to the crisis facing Venezuela.
The US government rejects a negotiated solution, in the words of Vice President Pence: “This is no time for dialogue; this is time for action.” This intransigent position is faithfully echoed by Guaidó. So while most Venezuelans want peace, the self-appointed president, backed by the full force of US military power, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that it was possible to “end the Maduro regime with a minimum of bloodshed.”
The Guaidó/Trump cabal’s fig leaf for legitimacy is based on the bogus argument that Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National Assembly the power to declare a national president’s “abandonment” of the office. In which case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.
In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.
The function of adjudicating the validity of an election, as in any country, is to be dealt with through court challenges, not by turning to Donald Trump for his approval. And certainly not by anointing an individual from a party that could have run in the 2018 election but decided to boycott.
The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), which is the separate supreme court branch of the Venezuelan government has certified Maduro’s reelection, as have independent international observers. Further, no appeal was filed by any of the boycotting parties, while all participating parties – including opposition ones – signed off on the validity of the election after the polls closed.
The far-right opposition has boycotted the high court as well as the electoral process. They contest the legitimacy of the TSJ because some members of the TSJ were appointed by a lame duck National Assembly favorable to Maduro, after a new National Assembly with a majority in opposition had been elected in December 2015 but not yet seated.
Even if President Maduro were somehow deemed to have experienced what is termed a falta absoluta (i.e., some sort of void in the presidency due to death, insanity, absence, etc.), the National Assembly president is only authorized to take over if the falta absoluta occurs before the lawful president “takes possession.” However, Maduro was already “in possession” before the January 10, 2019 presidential inauguration and even before the May 10, 2018 presidential election. Maduro had won the presidency in the 2013 election and ran and won reelection last May.
If the falta absoluta is deemed to have occurred during the first four years of the presidential term, the vice president takes over. Then the constitution decrees that a snap election for the presidency must be held within 30 days. This is what happened when President Hugo Chávez died while in office in 2013. Then Vice President Nicolás Maduro succeeded to the presidency, called for new elections, and was elected by the people of Venezuela.
If it is deemed that the falta absoluta occurred during the last two years of the six-year presidential term, the vice president serves until the end of the term, according to the Venezuelan constitution. And if the time of the alleged falta absoluta is unclear – when Maduro presided over “illegitimate” elections in 2018, as is claimed by the far-right opposition – it is up to the TSJ to decide, not the head of the National Assembly or even such an august authority as US Senator Marco Rubio. Or the craven US press (too numerous to cite), which without bothering to read the plain language of the Bolivarian Constitution, repeatedly refers to Guaidó as the “constitutionally authorized” or “legitimate” president.
As Alfred de Zayas, United Nations independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, tweeted: “Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution is inapplicable and cannot be twisted into legitimizing Guaidó’s self-proclamation as interim President. A coup is a coup.”
(de opgeblazen oorlogshitser en oorlogsmisdadiger Pompeo beweert dat Hezbollah werkzaam is in Venezuela en daar een leger heeft dat gezien zijn woorden amper onder doet voor de gezamenlijke NAVO troepen… ha! ha! ha! Ook hier is totaal geen bewijs voor deze belachelijke beschuldiging…)
Tom Elliott
30 years ago today in Venezuela: the mass rebellion against neoliberalism known as the Caracazo, which ended in the massacre of 300 to 3,000, most dumped in mass graves. Today, neoliberals claim the mantle of human rights as they try to do the same. Never forget! 
