Om de
ellende onder de volkeren van Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua nog verder
te verdiepen, heeft de psychopathische oorlogsmisdadiger Bolton
aangekondigd dat de VS deze landen nog meer sancties zal opleggen. In
zijn smerige praatje stelde Bolton dat de 3 landen de ‘stromannen’
zijn van het socialisme, waar hij deze landen ook aanduidt als de
‘trojka van tirannie, die volgens hem uit elkaar valt………’
Waar haalt schoft Bolton het lef vandaan, niet alleen daar de VS de echt tirannieke landen als de reli-fascistische dictaturen van Saoedi-Arabië en de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten steunt, waar de Egyptische-junta van al-Sisi aan toegevoegd moet worden, maar ook daar de VS een tiranniek beleid voert, met uitoefening van grootschalige terreur, tegen landen die haar niet welgevallig zijn, zoals Syrië en Iran……. Vergeet voorts niet dat de VS met haar economische oorlog tegen Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua, in feite terreur uitoefent op de volkeren van die landen…. (hetzelfde geldt uiteraard voor Iran)
Opperploert
Bolton deed zijn uitlatingen in de buurt van Miami bij de
herdenking van het Bay of Pigs fiasco in april 1961, waarbij de
CIA en ultra rechtse Cubanen het soevereine land Cuba aanvielen om
het bewind van Castro omver te werpen.
Om het
volk van Cuba nog harder te straffen, stelde Bolton dat Cubanen in de
VS met familie op Cuba in het vervolg niet meer dan $ 1,000.– per
persoon en maximaal 1 keer per kwartaal mogen overmaken naar die
familie……. Het is duidelijk: een voortzetting van het programma
van ontmoediging voor bewoners van landen die de VS niet welgevallig
zijn…..
Met deze
tactiek, een economische oorlogsvoering, probeert de VS de bevolking
van landen die haar niet welgevallig zijn, zoals de 3 genoemde
landen, zo te raken dat ze de straat opgaan voor massademonstraties
en daarmee probeert de VS het volk zover te krijgen dat het zittende
bewind wordt afgezet…….. Tegelijkertijd durft Bolton te stellen
dat hij de volkeren van Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua nooit in de
steek te laten……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Duidelijk geval van
gevaarlijke psychopathische gekte, waarbij elke redelijke en ethische
argumentatie ontbreekt……
Een paar
uur eerder sprak Pompeo over Cuba en hij wil dat Cuba de onteigende
bezittingen van ‘Amerikanen’ teruggeeft aan ‘de rechtmatige eigenaren’ en waarbij hij grote
herstelbetalingen, inclusief rente eist van de Cubaanse
regering…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! De bezittingen waar Bolton over
spreekt waren van smerige plantage en fabriekseigenaren die hun
arbeiders vreselijk hebben uitgebuit, voorts gaat het om bezittingen
van maffia organisaties die voor de revolutie van Castro en zijn
makkers in 1959 op Cuba grote casino’s en bordelen in hun bezit hadden…….
Gelukkig
verzet de EU zich tegen deze verdere uitbouw van sancties, echter dat
verzet is van nul en generlei waarde, immers het verzet van de EU
tegen de hernieuwde sancties van de VS tegen Iran, was er één in
woorden, daarna deed en doet de EU niets voor Iran en durven EU
bedrijven niet langer te investeren in dat land…….. Eigenlijk onnodig te zeggen dat het hier om een heel smerige vorm van chantage door de Trump administratie gaat, genoeg voor een aanklacht bij het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC)!!
The
Trump administration on Wednesday intensified its crackdown on Cuba,
Nicaragua and Venezuela, rolling back Obama administration policy and
announcing new restrictions and sanctions against the three countries
whose leaders national security adviser John Bolton dubbed the “three
stooges of socialism.”
“The
troika of tyranny — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — is beginning
to crumble,” Bolton said in a hard-hitting speech near Miami on the
58th anniversary of the United States’ failed Bay of Pigs invasion
of the island, an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.
Bolton
announced a new cap on the amount of money families in the United
States can send their relatives in Cuba. The Obama administration had
lifted limits on remittances, but the new limit will be $1,000 per
person per quarter, Bolton said. Remittances to Cuba from the United
States amounted to $3 billion in 2016, according to the State
Department.
Bolton
also announced that the U.S. was sanctioning the Central Bank of
Venezuela, which the Trump administration says has been instrumental
in propping up the embattled
government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
He also announced sanctions against financial services provider
Bancorp, which he claimed is a “slush fund” for Nicaragua’s
President Daniel Ortega.
“The
United States looks forward to watching each corner of this sordid
triangle of terror fall: in Havana, in Caracas, and in Managua,”
Bolton said in South Florida, which is home to thousands of exiles
and immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
He
said Obama administration policies gave the Cuban
government “political
cover to expand its malign influence” across
the region, including in Venezuela. Cuba has trained Venezuelan
security forces to repress civilians and support Maduro, Bolton said.
“Havana
continues to prop up Maduro and help him sustain the brutal suffering
of the Venezuelan people,” Bolton said. “As President Trump has
said, Maduro is quite simply a ‘Cuban puppet.’”
“Thousands
of Cuban doctors in Venezuela are being used as pawns by Maduro and
his Cuban sponsors to support his brutal and oppressive reign.”
Bolton’s
pledge to “never, ever abandon” the people of Cuba, Venezuela and
Nicaragua in their fight for freedom also might ring hollow in light
of the historical events he sought to highlight at the event hosted
by the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association.
Many
Cuban Americans to this day resent the late President John F. Kennedy
for not deploying American troops at a critical moment in the Bay of
Pigs invasion.
Meanwhile,
with the high stakes of the Cold War a fading memory, some critics of
U.S. policy toward Venezuela worry that the Trump administration’s
stance that all options are on the table, including a military one,
to oust Maduro is an empty threat that will only serve to ignite the
streets and geopolitical tensions with Russia, compounding the misery
of Venezuelan citizens.
“Honoring
one of U.S.’ greatest military fiascos from 60 years back suggests
U.S.
policy to Latin America owes more now to a perverse Cold War
nostalgia than practical benefits for people of the region,” said
Ivan Briscoe, the Latin American director for the International
Crisis Group (ICG), a think tank headquartered in Brussels.
Bolton
spoke just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in
Washington a new policy that allows lawsuits against foreign firms
operating on properties Cuba seized from Americans after the 1959
revolution. The United States has enforced a trade blockade against
Cuba since the early 1960s.
The
announcement comes at a moment of severe economic weakness for Cuba,
which is struggling to find enough cash to import basic food and
other supplies following a drop in aid from Venezuela and a string of
bad years in other key economic sectors.
Pompeo
said he won’t renew a bar on litigation that has been in place for
two decades, meaning that lawsuits can be filed starting on May 2
when the current suspension expires. The decision could cost dozens
of Canadian and European companies tens of billions of dollars in
compensation and interest.
Pompeo’s
decision gives Americans the right to sue companies that operate out
of hotels, tobacco factories, distilleries and other properties Cuba
nationalized after Fidel Castro took power. It allows Cubans who
became U.S. citizens years after their properties were taken to sue.
The
Justice Department has certified roughly 6,000 claims as having
merit, according to Kimberly Breier, the top U.S. diplomat for the
Americas. Those claims have an estimated value of $8 billion: $2
billion in property and $6 billion in interest, she said. In
addition, another 200,000 uncertified claims could run into the tens
of billions of dollars, she said.
Breier
said there would be no exceptions to the decision, which has already
prompted stern responses from Canada and Europe as they have vowed to
protect their businesses from lawsuits.
“European
companies that are operating in Cuba will have nothing to worry about
if they are not operating on properties taken from Americans,” she
said.
The
decision deals a severe blow to Havana’s efforts to draw foreign
investment to the island and comes as Trump steps up pressure
to Venezuela’s Maduro, who is holding power with help
from other countries, including Cuba, China and Russia.
Spain,
which has large investments in hotels and other tourism-related
industries on the island, was the first to react. A senior government
official told The Associated Press that Madrid would ask the European
Union to challenge the U.S. move in the World Trade Organization.
Businesses
from Canada, France and Great Britain among other countries also
conduct business in properties nationalized after Castro took power.
Johana
Tablada, Cuba’s deputy director of U.S. affairs, said on Twitter:
“Before they try to euphorically ride a wave of wickedness and
lies, they should take a dose of reality. The world has told John
Bolton and the U.S. government to eliminate the criminal blockade
against Cuba and the Helms-Burton Act” of 1996.
Countries
with large investments in Cuba have ferociously protested the law.
“The
extraterritorial application of the U.S. embargo is illegal and
violates international law,” said Alberto Navarro, the European
Union ambassador to Cuba. “I personally consider it immoral. For 60
years the only thing that’s resulted from the embargo is the
suffering of the Cuban people.”
Hoe
de VS te werk gaat als het een haar onwelgevallig regime wil laten
vallen, is op deze plek meermaals aangehaald: organiseer een opstand
onder het volk, het liefst middels een economische oorlog, die
aanvankelijk in het geniep wordt gevoerd: VS bedrijven onder druk
zetten, bedrijven die in bijvoorbeeld Venezuela levensmiddelen
verkopen, hun voorraden niet of onvoldoende te bevoorraden,
hetzelfde geldt voor farmaceutische bedrijven. Hierdoor ontstaat
ontevredenheid onder het volk, een situatie die kan leiden tot een
volledige opstand……
Een
opstand die uiteraard wordt georganiseerd en geregisseerd door de
VS >> CIA), waarbij men het liefst gewelddadige figuren inzet die middels
zwaar geweld als het doodschieten van demonstranten, het bewuste
bewind zoals dat in Venezuela in een kwaad daglicht stelt, ofwel: de
doden zouden te danken zijn aan het bewind, dit noemt men een false flag operatie en is een specialiteit van de CIA en het Pentagon…….
Met
een opstand in het land ligt de weg naar een staatsgreep open. Immers
op het punt dat er sprake is van een opstand, die ‘met geweld wordt
onderdrukt’, stappen de reguliere westerse media in de zaak en middels het
schreeuwen van moord en brand en de eis sancties in te stellen…..
Met sancties zoals in het geval van Venezuela, wordt het leven voor
de bevolking nog zwaarder, waarna men in diezelfde media in de
westerse politiek ingrijpen eist…… Zie hier in het kort de
werkwijze van de VS.
De VS heeft in Venezuela een tekort aan voedsel en medicijnen veroorzaakt, waar dezelfde VS nu de door haar naar voren geschoven kandidaat Guaidó wil voorzien van….. levensmiddelen en medicijnen!!
Op dit moment, even na 12.00 u. is er een Duitse correspondent in Venezuela aan het woord op WDR 5, en stap voor stap herhaalt zij de leugens die tot de door de VS georganiseerde opstand in Venezuela hebben geleid, zo herhaalt ze de leugen dat er geen economische oorlog is gevoerd tegen het land en dat de tekorten aan Maduro’s beleid zijn te danken…… Terwijl er aantoonbaar een economische oorlog is gevoerd tegen Venezuela en dat deze de grote tekorten heeft veroorzaakt……
De correspondent spreekt alsof de toestand van het Venezolaanse volk hetzelfde is als die voor de Palestijnen in de Gazastrook en op de West Bank, of sterker nog: of deze te vergelijken is met de genocide die de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uitvoert in Jemen (met grote steun van de VS en GB…) en waarbij dagelijks grote aantallen mensen omkomen…. (opvallend is het volgende onderwerp op WDR 5: fake news [nepnieuws] en de betrouwbaarheid van de reguliere media…..)
Het hieronder opgenomen artikel van de
schrijver Vijay
Prashad, werd op 5 februari jl. gepubliceerd op CounterPunch. Prashad haalt nog een aantal extra punten aan die in het stappenplan
van de VS worden gebruikt om te komen tot een verandering van regime. Prashad doet dit o.a. door zaken uit het verleden aan te halen, zoals de coup van
de VS tegen de socialistische president Allende in Chili op 11
september 1973 (de eerste 9/11, als de tweede, onder regie van de CIA….)
On
15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything
possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist
president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according
to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make
the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about
the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as
Allende’s government was removed from power. The CIA started
Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the
covert destabilisation of the country.
CIA
memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.
US
business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft
drink maker Pepsi Cola and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and
Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once Allende
nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated
this day as the Day of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad
Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections of the
military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11
September 1973, these military men moved against Allende, who died in
the regime change operation. The US ‘created the conditions’ as
US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US
President Richard Nixon answered, ‘that is the way it is going to
be played’. Such is the mood of international gangsterism.
Phone
Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16
September 1973.
Chile
entered the dark night of a military dictatorship that turned over
the country to US monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen
the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet’s cabinet.
What
happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has
attempted to do in many other countries of the Global South. The most
recent target for the US government – and Western big business –
is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing unique.
It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is
familiar to countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. The formula is clichéd. It is commonplace, a
twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a world under
the heel of the West and of Western big business.
Step
One: Colonialism’s Traps.
Most
of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by
colonialism. Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the
misfortune of being single commodity producers – either sugar for
Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their economies
meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues
from their singular commodities (98% of Venezuela’s export revenues
come from oil). As long as the prices of the commodities remained
high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell, revenue
suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from
$160.72 per barrel (June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019).
Venezuela’s export revenues collapsed in this decade.
Step
Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order.
In
1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the
architecture of the world economy. They called for the creation of a
New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would allow them to
pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and
diversify their economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil
and bauxite – were to be built so that the one-commodity country
could have some control over prices of the products that they relied
upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
founded in 1960, was a pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others
were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of OPEC over the
past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the
world’s largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to
control oil prices. They are at the mercy of the powerful countries
of the world.
Step
Three: The Death of Southern Agriculture.
In
November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and
landless peasants in the world. That month, the World Trade
Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity of
Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and
landless peasants of the Global South. Mechanisation and large,
industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had raised
productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per
farmer. The small farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the
world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. They
were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as Samir
Amin wrote,
presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant.
What are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is
higher in the West, but the corporate take-over of agriculture (as
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior Fellow P.
Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off
their land and leaves them to starve.
Step
Four: Culture of Plunder.
Emboldened
by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law.
As Kambale
Musavuli and I write of
the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6 billion is
routinely robbed of at least $500 by monopoly mining firms, mostly
from Canada – the country now leading the charge against Venezuela.
Mispricing and tax avoidance schemes allow these large firms
(Canada’s Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal billions
of dollars from impoverished states.
Step
Five: Debt as a Way of Life.
Unable
to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world
agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of
the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial
lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global
South states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by
60%. When commodity prices rose between 2000 and 2010, debt in the
Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall from 2010,
debts have risen. The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished
countries that they follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that
has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of Angola’s export revenue
is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil
exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and
Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP ratios. Two out of five low-income
countries are in deep financial distress.
Step
Six: Public Finances Go to Hell.
With
little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances
in the Global South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on
Trade and Development points out, ‘public finances have continued
to be suffocated’. States simply cannot put together the funds
needed to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make
borrowing difficult, which is compounded by the fact that banks
charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to indebted
countries.
Step
Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending.
Impossible
to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance,
governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending.
Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification –
all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF
force countries to conduct ‘reforms’, a word that means
extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face
immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as
the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.
Step
Eight: Social Distress Leads to Migration.
The
total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million.
That makes the country called Migration the 21st largest country in
the world after Thailand and ahead of the United Kingdom. Migration
has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one
end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not
unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the
global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United
States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through
Libya are part of this global exodus.
Step
Nine: Who Controls the Narrative?
The
monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no
sympathy for the structural crisis faced by governments from
Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to Western pressure
are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct
‘reforms’, they are safe. Those countries that argue against the
‘reforms’ are vulnerable to being attacked. Their leaders become
‘dictators’, their people hostages. A contested election in
Bangladesh or in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United
States is not cause for regime change. That special treatment is left
for Venezuela.
Step
Ten: Who’s the Real President?
Regime
change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy
of the government in power: by putting the weight of the United
States behind an unelected person, calling him the new president and
creating a situation where the elected leader’s authority is
undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides –
without an election – to anoint its own proxy. That person – in
Venezuela’s case Juan Guaidó – rapidly has to make it clear that
he will bend to the authority of the United States. His kitchen
cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties
to the US (such as Harvard University’s Ricardo Hausmann and
Carnegie’s Moisés Naím) – will make it clear that they want to
privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan people in the name
of the Venezuelan people.
Step
Eleven: Make the Economy Scream.
Venezuela
has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started
down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared
Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to
scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom
brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the
shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and
watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did
to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US
sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela
lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they
began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No
wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says
that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages
are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that
sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of
disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to
hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the
government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the
people of Venezuela.
Step
Twelve: Go to War.
US
National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the
words 5,000 troops in Colombia written on it. These are US troops,
already deployed in Venezuela’s neighbour. The US Southern Command
is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As
the coup climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go
to war.
None
of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a
commander of the Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e
Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to
free her country. It is not inevitable to the people of Venezuela,
who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not
inevitable to our friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea
Benjamin walked into a meeting of the Organisation of American States
and said – No!
It
is time to say No to regime change intervention. There is no middle
ground.
(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…)
Afgelopen week werd bekend gemaakt dat ‘het sonische wapen’ van de ‘vileine’ Cubaanse overheid niet is wat men dacht……. Verschillende ambassade medewerkers melden zich vorig jaar ziek en stelden gehoorschade op te hebben gelopen in de VS ambassade in Havana. Deze figuren keerden zelfs terug naar de VS…..
De reguliere westerse media kwamen uiteraard met beschuldigingen dat de Cubaanse overheid de dader van dit ‘vreselijk gebeuren’ was….. Hoorde op BNR zelfs een ‘deskundige’, ene Konijn die aanvankelijk stelde het een ongeloofwaardig verhaal te vinden, maar na enig aandringen plompverloren stelde dat de enige mogelijkheid voor dit gebeuren, handelingen van de Cubaanse overheid moesten zijn….*
Terug naar de berichtgeving van afgelopen week: de terreuraanslag op het ambassade personeel van de VS werd uitgevoerd door…… baltsende krekels…. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Je kan het vergeten dat de reguliere westerse massamediaorganen een rectificatie voor hun beschuldiging aan het adres van Cuba zullen plaatsen, noch zullen Facebook en Twitter de sites van die media blokkeren, geen kans ook dat NewsGuard** hen als onbetrouwbaar zal kwalificeren…….
Van BNR valt al helemaal niets te verwachten, de ‘buitenlanddeskundige’ van dit station, Bernhard Hammelburg had het gore lef een reclame voor zijn programma te maken waarin hij de laatste weken zijn BNR ‘De Wereld’ als volledig onbevooroordeeld, onafhankelijk en objectief noemt………. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Jezus je komt niet meer bij als je ‘m in het spotje hoort zwetsen! Klik voor de gein op het label met zijn naam, direct onder dit bericht***, dan zal je zien hoe onbevooroordeeld en objectief zijn lobbyprogramma werkelijk is, lobby voor het fascistische neoliberalisme, het militair-industrieel complex, de VS, de NAVO en (fascistische) staten als Oekraïne…….. Deze snuiter durft ook nog eens het woord fake news (nepnieuws) regelmatig te laten vallen……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
*** Na een aantal berichten wordt het laatst gelezen bericht telkens herhaald, dan even onder het laatst gelezen bericht weer op het bewuste label klikken.
InformationClearing House bracht gisteren een artikel over de plannen
van de VS met Latijns-Amerika, van belang nu het er toch op lijkt dat
de VS aanzienlijke troepenverminderingen zal doorvoeren in het
Midden-Oosten.
Thierry
Mason, de schrijver van het artikel gaat uitvoerig in op de bestaande
status quo in Latijns-Amerika, waar bijvoorbeeld Venezuela al tijden
in de schijnwerpers staat. De VS is al jaren bezig met een
economische oorlogsvoering tegen Venezuela, waarbij o.a. de VS
winkelketens voor levensmiddelen al een aantal jaren geleden onder druk
werden gezet door de Obama administratie hun winkels en magazijnen in Venezuela niet langer te
bevoorraden……
Deze
smerige ‘tactiek’ heeft deels gewerkt, de middenstand en de hogere
klasse gooiden de kont tegen de krib en met uiterst gewelddadige
demonstraties probeerde men Maduro tot aftreden te dwingen en zoals
we weten is dit niet gelukt. Men gaf de regering Maduro de schuld van dat geweld, echter uit beelden bleek dat veel demonstranten gewapend waren en op de politie schoten, naar verluid ging het hier om door de VS aangevoerde terroristen…..
Bolton
heeft Venezuela, Cuba* en Nicaragua aangewezen als as van het kwaad in
Latijns-Amerika en heeft gesteld dat de VS daar wil ingrijpen, ofwel er staan weer nieuwe illegale oorlogen van de VS op stapel….. De NAVO heeft in opdracht van haar
bevelhebber, de VS Columbia toegelaten als lid van deze ‘Noord
Atlantische Verdragsorganisatie…..’ (ha! ha! ha! ha!) Intussen schijnt terreurorganisatie NAVO twee
militaire bases te hebben in dat land, dicht op de grens met o.a. Venezuela…….
Voorts
heeft de VS landen als Brazilië in de zak (dat overigens onder
fascist Bolsonaro nauw samenwerkt met terreurstaat Israël). Guyana (eerder Brits-Guiana genoemd) een ander buurland van Venezuela, wordt zoals de voormalige naam al zegt in feite door
Groot-Brittannië gecontroleerd en bestuurd, GB ook al geen vriend van Venezuela, om
het maar zachtjes uit te drukken…….. En dan beste bezoeker is daar…
Nederland dat een dikke vinger in de Antilliaanse pap heeft, waar de
Nederlandse marine in het gebied van de Antilliaanse eilanden (relatief dicht op Venezuela) nauw samenwerkt met de VS, zogenaamd alleen tegen
drugssmokkelaars, echter je hoeft geen universitaire graad te hebben
om te begrijpen dat deze samenwerking veel verder gaat dan het
tegengaan van drugssmokkel…..
Na 13.00 u. vanmiddag kwam WDR nog eens met een aantal leugens over Maduro, dit n.a.v. de inauguratie van Maduro voor zijn tweede termijn als president. Zo werd gesteld dat het grootste deel van de Venezolaanse bevolking tegen Maduro is, dit is een grove leugen, de meerderheid staat wel degelijk achter Maduro, t.w. de grote onderlaag van die bevolking……. Uiteraard werd weer gesteld dat Maduro een desastreus economisch beleid voert, met geen woord werd over de economische oorlog van de VS tegen dat land gesproken, waardoor bijvoorbeeld zelfs medicijnen moeilijk of niet te krijgen zijn, het blokkeren van dergelijke importen is zonder meer een ernstige oorlogsmisdaad……
Lees het volgende artikel van Meyssan en geeft het ajb door, de wereld zit allesbehalve te wachten op oorlogen in Latijns-Amerika. De VS dient zich eindelijk terug te trekken op eigen grondgebied en het fascisme dat ook in Latijns-Amerika op weg terug is naar de macht, moet de pas afgesneden worden, deze ultrarechtse schoften die al zoveel ellende hebben gebracht over de wereld, moeten worden bestreden, voor ze nog veel meer onheil kunnen aanrichten! Opvallend ook het bericht dat de zoon van de Surinaamse president Bouterse niet werd gearresteerd vanwege drugssmokkel, maar vanwege zijn poging het Libanese Hezbollah te introduceren in Suriname….. Dino Bouterse werd in 2013 ondanks zijn diplomatieke paspoort in Panama (dat onder controle van de VS staat) gearresteerd (!!) en uitgeleverd aan de VS waar hij werd veroordeeld tot 16 jaar cel……
The
Terrible Forthcoming Destruction of the “Caribbean Basin”
President
Trump has announced the withdrawal of US combat troops from the «
Greater Middle East », but the Pentagon is still pursuing the
implementation of the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski plan. This time the aim is
to destroy the States of the “Caribbean Basin “. This is
nothing like the overthrow of pro-Soviet regimes, as in the 1970’s,
but the destruction of all regional State structures, without
consideration for friends or political enemies. Thierry Meyssan
observes the preparations for this new series of wars.
By
Thierry Meyssan
January
10, 2019 “Information
Clearing House” – In a
series of previous articles, we presented the SouthCom plan to
provoke wars between the Latin-American nations in order to destroy
the structures of all the States in the « Caribbean Basin » [1].
Preparations
for wars of this magnitude, intended to follow on from the conflicts
in the « Greater Middle East » according to the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski
strategy, requires a decade [2].
After
the period of economic destabilisation [3]
and that of military preparation, the actual operation should begin
in the years to come by an attack on Venezuela by Brazil (supported
by Israël), Colombia (an ally of the United States) and Guyana (in
other words, the United Kingdom). It will be followed by others,
beginning with Cuba and Nicaragua (the « troïka of tyranny »
according to John Bolton).
However,
the original plan may be modified, particularly because of the return
of the imperial ambitions of the United Kingdom [4]
which may influence the Pentagon.
This
is where we are now :
The
evolution of Venezuela
Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez had developed relations with the « Greater
Middle East » on an ideological basis. He had in particular grown
closer to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President
Bachar el-Assad. Together, they had imagined the possibility of
founding an intergovernmental organisation, the « Free Allies
Movement », on the model of the « Non-Aligned Movement », which
was paralysed by the alignment with the United States, over time, of
certain of its members [5].
Although
Nicolas Maduro adopted the same language as Hugo Chávez, he chose a
very different foreign policy. It is true that he continued the
rapprochement with Russia and, in his turn welcomed Russian bombers
to Venezuela. He signed a contract to import 600,000 tonnes of wheat
in order to deal with starvation in his country. Above all, he
prepared to receive six billion dollars of investments, including
five in the oil sector. Russian engineers took over the posts which
were intended for Venezuelan workers but which they had abandoned.
Nicolas
Maduro reorganised the alliances of his country on new foundations.
He wove close links with Turkey, which is a member of NATO and whose
army presently occupies Northern Syria. Maduro went to Istanbul on
four occasions and Erdoğan went once to Caracas.
Switzerland
was an ally of Hugo Chávez, and had advised him for the composition
of his Constitution. Fearing that he would be unable to refine his
country’s gold in Switzerland, Nicolas Maduro looked to Turkey,
which transformed the raw material into bullion. In the past, this
gold had remained in Swiss banks as a guarantee for oil contracts.
From now on, the liquid assets were transferred to Turkey, while the
newly treated gold returned to Venezuela. This orientation may be
interpreted as being no longer founded on ideology, but on interest.
Everything depends on who benefits.
Simultaneously,
Venezuela became the target of a destabilisation campaign which began
with the guarimbas demonstrations, continued with
the attempted coup d’etat on 12 February 2015 (« Operation Jericho
»), then by a series of attacks on the national currency, and
organised emigration. In this context, Turkey offered Venezuela the
possibility of avoiding US sanctions. The exchanges between the two
countries multiplied fifteen-fold in 2018.
Whatever
the evolution of the Venezuelan régime, nothing can justify what is
being prepared against its population.
Coordination
of logistical means
From
31 July to 12 August 2017, SouthCom organise a vast exercise with
more than 3,000 men from 25 allied states, including France and the
United Kingdom. The goal was to prepare a swift landing for troops in
Venezuela [6].
Colombia
Colombia
is a state, but not a nation. Its population lives geographically
separate according to social class, with enormous differences in the
quality of life. Almost no Colombian has ever spent time in a
neighbourhood attributed to another social class than their own. This
strict separation has made possible the multiplication of
paramilitary forces and consequently armed interior conflicts which
have caused more than 220,000 victims in thirty years.
In
power since August 2018, President Iván Duque has challenged the
fragile peace concluded with the FARC by his predecessor, Juan Manuel
Santos – but not with the ELN. He has not dismissed the option of a
military intervention against Venezuela. According to Nicolas Maduro,
the United States are currently training 734 mercenaries in a
training camp situated in Tona with a view to carrying out a false
flag operation intended to spark a war with Venezuela. Taking into
account the sociological particularity of Colombia, it is impossible
to determine with certainty whether or not the training camp is
controlled by Bogota.
Guyana
In
the 19th century, the colonial powers agreed to a frontier between
British Guyana (presently Guyana) and Dutch Guyana (presently
Surinam). but no text has ever defined the frontier between the
British zone and the Spanish zone (presently Venezuela).
Consequently, Guyana administrates 160,000 km2 of forest which is
still a source of dispute with its larger neighbour. By virtue of the
Geneva agreement of 17 February 1966, the two states deferred to the
Secretary General of the UNO (at that time the Burmese U Thant).
Nothing has changed since then – Guyana has proposed to bring the
case before the UNO** Permanent Court of Arbitration, while Venezuela
prefers direct negotiations.
This
territorial dispute does not seem particularly urgent, because the
contested area is an uninhabited forest which was believed to be
without value – however, it is a huge area which represents two
thirds of Guyana. The Geneva agreement has been violated 15 times by
Guyana, which specifically authorised the exploitation of a gold
mine. Above all, the stakes were raised in 2015 with the discovery by
ExxonMobil of oil deposits in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly in the
territorial waters of the contested zone.
The
population of Guyana is composed of 40 % Indians, 30 % Africans, 20 %
mixed race and 10 % American Indians. The Indians are a strong
presence in the civil services and the Africans in the army.
On
21 December, a vote of no confidence was lodged against the
government of President David Granger, a pro-British, anti-Venezuelan
General, in power since 2015. To everyone’s surprise, a deputy,
Charrandas Persaud, voted against his own party, and in an atmosphere
of indescribable chaos, provoked the fall of the government which had
only a one-vote majority. Since then, the country is in a state of
great instability – we do not know whether President Granger, who is
presently undergoing chemotherapy, will be able to handle current
affairs, while Charrandas Persaud left Parliament with an escort, via
a back door, and has fled to Canada.
On
22 December 2018, in the absence of a government, the Ramform
Tethys (under the flag of the Bahamas) and the Delta
Monarch (Trinidad and Tobago) undertook submarine
explorations in the contested zone on behalf of Exxon-Mobil.
Considering that this intrusion violated the Geneva agreement, the
Venezuelan army chased the two ships away. The Guyanese Minister for
Foreign Affairs, working with current affairs, declared it a hostile
act.
The
United Kingdom Minister for Defense, Gavin Williamson, declared to
the Sunday
Telegraph on
30 December 2018 that the Crown was putting an end to decolonisation,
which had been Whitehall’s doctrine since the Suez affair in 1956.
London is preparing to open a new military base in the Caribbean (for
the moment the UK has bases only in Gibraltar, Cyprus, Diego Garcia
and on the Falkland islands). The new base could be situated on
Montserrat (West Indies), or more probably in Guyana, and should be
operational in 2022 [7].
Guyana
is a neighbour of Surinam (Dutch Guyana). Its President, Desi
Bouterse, is wanted in Europe for drug trafficking – an affair
which pre-dated his election. But his son, Dino, was arrested in
Panama in 2013, despite the fact that he entered that country under a
diplomatic passport. He was extradited to the United States where he
was sentenced to 16 years of prison for drug trafficking – in reality
because he was setting up the Lebanese Hezbollah in Surinam.
The
baptism of Jair Bolsonaro in the waters of the Jordan (Israël) (opvallend hoe goed het christelijk geloof het meestal kan vinden met fascisten….)
Brazil
In
May 2016, Henrique Meirelles, the Minister of Finance for the
transitional government of Libano-Brazilian Michel Temer, nominated
Israelo-Brazilian Ilan Goldfajn as director of the Central Bank.
Mereilles had also presided the Committee for the preparation of the
Olympic Games, calling on Tsahal to coordinate the Brazilian army and
police, thus guaranteeing the security of the Games. Simultaneously
controlling the Central Bank, the army and the police of Brazil,
Israël had no difficulty in supporting the popular movement of
dissatisfaction in the face of the incompetence of the Workers’
Party.
Believing
– without any solid proof – that Presidente Dilma Rousseff had fudged
the public accounts in the context of the Petrobras scandal, the
parliamentarians impeached her in August 2016.
During
the Presidential election of 2018, candidate Jair Bolsonaro went to
Israël to be baptised in the waters of the Jordan, and consequently
obtained a massive percentage of the evangelical vote. He was elected
with General Hamilton Mourão as his Vice-President. During the
period of transition, Mourão declared that Brazil should prepare to
send men to Venezuela as a « peace force » once President Maduro
had been overthrown – comments which constitute a barely-disguised
threat which President Bolsonaro attempted to downplay.
In
an interview on 3 January 2019, on the TV channel SBT, President
Bolsonaro spoke of negotiations with the Pentagon concerning the
possibility of creating a US military base in Brazil. This
declaration raised powerful opposition within the armed forces, for
whom their country is capable of defending itself without assistance.
Benjamin
Netanyahu during the investiture of President Bolsonaro. Israël has
taken position in Brazil.
During
his investiture on 2 January 2019, the new President welcomed Israëli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the first time that an
Israëli personality of this importance had been to Brazil. On this
occasion, President Bolsonaro announced the coming transfer of the
Brazilian embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem.
US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who also went to the investiture,
where he met Peruvian Minister for Foreign Affairs Néstor Popolizio,
announced with President Bolsonaro his intention to fight with him
against the « authoritarian régimes » of Venezuela and Cuba.
Returning to the United States, he stopped over in Bogota to meet
with Colombian President Iván Duque. The two men agreed to work for
the diplomatic isolation of Venezuela. On 4 January 2019, the 14
States of the Lima Group (including Brazil, Colombia and Guyana) met
to agree that Nicolas Maduro’s new mandate, which begins on 10
January, is « illegitimate » [8].
This communiqué has not been signed by Mexico. Apart from this, six
of the member-States lodged a complaint with the International
Criminal Tribunal*** against President Nicolas Maduro for crimes against
humanity. It
is perfectly clear today that the process towards war is under way.
Enormous forces are in play, and there is little that can be done to
stop them now. It is in this context that Russia is studying the
possibility of setting up a permanent aero-naval base in Venezuela.
The island of La Orchila – where President Hugo Chávez was held
prisoner during the coup d’etat of April 2002 – would enable the
storing of strategic bombers. This would constitute a much greater
threat to the United States than the Soviet missiles stationed in
Cuba in 1962.
Thierry
Meyssan, Political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau
Voltaire (Voltaire Network).
Latest work in French – Sous nos Yeux.
Du 11-Septembre à Donald Trump (Right Before our Eyes. From 9/11 to
Donald Trump). Translation
– Pete
Kimberley
[2] The
Pentagon’s New Map,
Thomas P. M. Barnett, Putnam Publishing Group, 2004. “The
US military project for the world”,
by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire
Network,
22 August 2017.
* Afgelopen week werd bekend gemaakt dat het VS ambassade personeel dat middels ‘een sonisch wapen’ onwel werd, waar men in de westerse pers al flink tamtam over maakte en met de beschuldigende vinger naar de Cubaanse regering wees, in werkelijkheid werd ‘aangevallen’ door het geluid van (echte) baltsende krekels…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
** UNO (United Nations Organisation) >> nu kortweg UN of het Nederlandse VN.
*** Naar grote waarschijnlijkheid doelt de schrijver op het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) in Den Haag.
Met de
bewondering die de psychopathische oorlogsmisdadiger Bolton uitsprak
voor de Braziliaanse fascistische president Bolsonaro, gaf hij toe
niet alleen zelf een fascist te zijn, maar stelde hij tegelijk dat
Bolsonaro een gelijk geaarde geallieerde is van de VS…….
Bolton is voorts blij met de nieuwe leider van Colombia, Ivan Duque, een zogenaamde centrumdemocraat, die een keihard beleid voert…… Dan is daar nog de in 2009 door de VS (CIA) georganiseerde staatsgreep in Honduras, waarna deze terreurentiteit onder Hillary Clinton op buitenlandse zaken, de fascistische juntaleider Hernández parachuteerde…. Honduras, je weet wel het land van de vluchtelingen, waaruit het overgrote deel van de vluchtelingenkaravaan bestaat, de karavaan die nu in Mexico-Stad is aangekomen en die in de richting van de Mexicaanse grens met de VS trekt……*
Volgens Bolton zijn Brazilië en Columbia (godbetert tegenwoordig ook NAVO-lid) een voorbeeld van vrije markten met een open, transparant en verantwoordelijk regeringsbeleid…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Corrupte, fascistische en uiterst gewelddadige regeringen, zal je bedoelen!!! (dat ziet men graag in de VS)
Bolton heeft ook zijn eigen ‘Axes of Evil’, al noemt hij dit de ‘Troika of Tyranny’ (ha! ha! ha! en dat zegt een oorlogsmisdadiger van de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde!!), die trojka bestaat uit: Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua, landen die hij ook het liefst binnen zou willen vallen……. Al is de VS natuurlijk al bezig met een economische oorlog te voeren tegen deze landen en is de CIA bezig met het organiseren van opstanden in die drie landen…….
Bolton? Zoals de voormalige VS regeringen en de rest van de huidige VS administratie onder Trump overrijp voor het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC)!!
John
Bolton Praises Openly Fascist Jair Bolsonaro as ‘Like-Minded’
Ally
(CD) — Declaring
not just sympathy but outright admiration for a fascist who
has threatened
violence against
his leftist political opponents, celebrated the use of torture, and
promised to give the police free
rein to murder at will,
U.S. national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday praised
Brazil’s newly elected strongman President Jair Bolsonaro as a
“like-minded” partner who shares the Trump administration’s
commitment to so-called “free market principles.”
“The
recent elections of like-minded leaders in key countries, including
Ivan Duque in Colombia, and last weekend Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil,
are positive signs for the future of the region, and demonstrate a
growing regional commitment to free-market principles, and open,
transparent, and accountable governance,” Bolton said during a
speech at Miami-Dade College.
“[T]oday,
in this hemisphere, we are also confronted once again with the
destructive forces of oppression, socialism, totalitarianism,”
Bolton added.
But
Bolton went on to proclaim that with the rise of Bolsonaro, “the
Troika of Tyranny in this hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela, and
Nicaragua—has finally met its match,” coining a phrase that
immediately drew
comparisons to
former President George W. Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” line,
which was used repeatedly to justify America’s disastrous invasions
of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vox‘s
Alex Ward described Bolton’s
remarks as a “modern-day ‘Axis of Evil’ speech.”
Intensifying
fears that the Trump administration could be considering military
action against Latin American nations it has deemed enemies, Bolton
announced that the White House plans to take “direct action
against” Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua “to defend the rule of
law, liberty, and basic human decency in our region.”
Brazil’s new President Jair Bolsonaro is a far-right authoritarian who has praised the former military dictatorship and referred to black activists as “animals.”
It’s very troubling that Bolton sees Bolsonaro as “like-minded” with Trump. Even more troubling, he’s probably right.
Shortly
after celebrating the ascent of Bolsonaro—whose promise to pry open
Brazilian markets, accelerate the corporate plunder of the Amazon
rainforest, and privatize his nation’s public services has also
been met with unabashed giddiness
by the global business community—Bolton
righteously proclaimed that the United States “will not reward
firing squads, torturers, and murderers,” despite its long
and gruesome history of doing precisely that.
Completely
ignoring Bolsonaro’s enthusiastic praise of Brazil’s 21-year
military dictatorship—which came to power after a U.S.-backed coup
in 1964—Bolton concluded that America will not “appease dictators
and despots near our shores in this hemisphere.”
While
Bolton’s effusive praise for Bolsonaro was met with revulsion by
analysts and commentators, one former State Department official noted
that his remarks are hardly cause for surprise.
“It
is not surprising that Bolton and the U.S. government would see the
president-elect of Brazil as an ally,” Jana Nelson, a Brazil desk
officer at the State Department from 2010 to 2015, told Vox.
Facebook
maakte onlangs bekend dat het de strijd verder aangaat met ‘fake
news’ (‘nepnieuws’) door samen te werken met 2 propaganda organen van
de overheid, het National Democratic Institute (NDI) en het
International Republican Institute (IRI). Eerder werd al
bekendgemaakt dat Facebook samenwerkt met de rechtse, door de NAVO
gesteunde Atlantic Council (dat lobbyt voor de buitenlandse terreur van de VS en haar oorlogshond de NAVO, plus uiteraard het
militair-industrieel complex)……
Met name
‘linkse’ alternatieve mediaorganen die op internet werkzaam zijn
zoals Common Dreams, worden al aangepakt door Facebook, waardoor de zichtbaarheid van deze sites op het platform zwaar is teruggebracht……..
Het is
dan ook meer dan duidelijk dat de VS steeds verder verandert in een
politiestaat, inclusief de daarbij horende censuur……
Bovendien
is Facebook met deze samenwerking verworden tot het zoveelste
propaganda orgaan van de VS, de grootste terreurentiteit op onze
kleine aarde…….. Ofwel het sociale netwerk wordt opgescheept met
censuur en dat voor het zogenaamd brengen van ‘fake news’ (nepnieuws) en propaganda, terwijl de ‘normale’ reguliere (massa-) media voortdurend fake news en propaganda brengen (en zichzelf daarbij censureren, althans als het gaat om artikelen van de
journalisten die werken voor die media, maar die hun werk nog wel serieus nemen…..)
De meeste nieuws en actualiteiten sites en blogs op het internet danken hun ontstaan juist aan de smerige berichtgeving in/op de reguliere (massa-) media, berichtgeving die zoals gezegd bol staat van nepnieuws en propaganda voor de huidige inhumane neoliberale maatschappij en waar de illegale oorlogen van de VS op basis van doorzichtige leugens worden voorgesteld als absoluut noodzakelijk, zelfs als dat meer dan 1,5 miljoen doden kost, zoals in het geval van de illegale oorlog die de VS en NAVO partners in 2003 tegen Irak begonnen…….
Facebook heeft in samenspraak met de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël, besloten een groot aantal accounts van Palestijnen te verwijderen van haar platform…….. Alsof de Palestijnen zionisten onderdrukken…….
Lees het
volgende artikel van Alan MacLeod, eerder gepubliceerd op FAIR.org,
door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media, en geeft het door, ook in
Nederland gaat men dezelfde kant op, bovendien is de censuur op
Facebook ook van toepassing op Nederlandse accounts…..
(FAIR) — Media
giant Facebook recently
announced (Reuters, 9/19/18)
it would combat “fake news” by partnering with two propaganda
organizations founded and funded by the US government: the National
Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute
(IRI). The social media platform was already working closely with the
NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council think tank (FAIR.org, 5/21/18).
Reuters
(9/19/18)
described two branches of the National Endowment for Democracy, set
up by the Reagan administration during the Cold War to promote US
foreign policy objectives, as “two US nonprofits.”
In
a previous FAIR article (8/22/18),
I noted that the “fake news” issue was being used as a pretext to
attack the left and progressive news sites. Changes to Facebook’s
algorithm have reduced traffic significantly for progressive outlets
like Common
Dreams (5/3/18),
while the pages of Venezuelan government–backed TeleSur
English and
the independent Venezuelanalysis were
shut down without warning, and only reinstated after a public outcry.
The
Washington, DC–based NDI and IRI are staffed with senior Democratic
and Republican politicians; the NDI is chaired by former Secretary of
State Madeleine
Albright,
while the late Sen. John
McCain was
the longtime IRI chair. Both groups were created in 1983 as arms of
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Cold War enterprise
backed by then–CIA director William Casey (Jacobin, 3/7/18).
That these two US government creations, along with a NATO
offshoot like
the Atlantic Council, are used by Facebook to
distinguish real from fake news is effectively state censorship.
Facebook’s
collaboration with the NED organizations is particularly troubling,
as both have aggressively pursued regime change against leftist
governments overseas. The NDI undermined the Sandinista government of
Nicaragua in the 1980s, and continues
to do so to this day,
while the IRI claimed a key role in the 2002 coup against leftist
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, announcing that
it had
“served
as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil
society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future….
We stand ready to continue our partnership with the courageous
Venezuelan people.”
The Reuters report
(9/19/18)
mentioned that Facebook was
anxious to better curate what Brazilians saw on their feeds in the
run-up to their presidential elections, which pits far-right Jair
Bolsonaro against leftist Fernando Haddad. The US government has a
long history of undermining democracy in Brazil, from supporting
a coup in
1964 against the progressive Goulart administration to continually
spying on leftist President Dilma Rousseff (BBC, 7/4/15)
in the run-up to the parliamentary coup against her in 2016
(CounterSpin, 6/2/17).
Glenn
Greenwald (Intercept, 12/30/17) reported that “Facebook has been on
a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the
decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined
by Israeli officials.”
Soon
after it partnered with the Atlantic Council, Facebook moved
to delete accounts and pages connected with Iranian broadcasting
channels (CNBC, 8/23/18),
while The
Intercept (12/30/17)
reported that in 2017 the social media platform met with Israeli
government officials to discuss which Palestinian voices it should
censor. Ninety-five percent of Israeli government requests for
deletion were granted. Thus the US government and its allies are
effectively using the platform to silence dissenting opinion, both at
home and on the world stage, controlling what Facebook‘s
2 billion users see and do not see.
Progressives
should be deeply skeptical that these moves have anything to do with
their stated objective of promoting democracy. Bloomberg
Businessweek (9/29/17)
reported that the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party
went to Facebook headquarters
for discussions with US companies about how it could use the platform
for recruitment and micro-targeting in the 2017 elections. AfD
tripled its previous vote share, becoming the third-largest party in
Germany, the far right’s best showing since World War II.
Public
trust in government is at 18 percent—an all-time low
(Pew, 12/14/17).
There is similar mistrust of Facebook,
with only 20
percent of Americans agreeing
social media sites do a good job separating fact from fiction. And
yet, worldwide, Facebook is
a crucial news source. Fifty-two percent of Brazilians, 61 percent of
Mexicans, and 51 percent of Italians and Turks use
the platform for
news; 39
percent of
the US gets their news from the site.
This
means that, despite the fact that even its own public mistrusts it,
the US government has effectively become the arbiter of what the
world sees and hears, with the ability to marginalize or simply
delete news from organizations or countries that do not share its
opinions. This power could be used at sensitive times, like
elections. This is not an idle threat. The US created an entire fake
social network for Cubans that aimed to stir unrest and overthrow the
Cuban government, according to the Guardian (4/3/14).
That
a single corporation has such a monopoly over the flow of worldwide
news is already problematic, but the increasing meshing of corporate
and US government control over the means of communication is
particularly worrying. All those who believe in free and open
exchange of information should oppose Facebook becoming
a tool of US foreign policy.
Andre
Vltchek publiceerde afgelopen maandag een artikel op Information
Clearing House met als vertaalde titel: ‘Hallo, ze hebben tegen je
gelogen over Iran’.
Niet
alleen wijst Vltchek op het feit dat een heel groot deel van wat de
reguliere (massa-) media als nieuws brengen, niets anders is dan
gefabriceerde leugens, waar hij m.n. ingaat op de agressie tegen
Iran, maar ook laat hij ‘zien’ hoe Iran omgaat met ellende in de wereld: solidair met
onderdrukte volkeren, die worstelen om te blijven leven, naast landen
als Jemen (aan wie Iran geen wapens levert, maar humanitaire hulpgoederen!), Syrië en Palestina (van Palestina is in feite geen sprake meer), maar ook landen als Cuba en Venezuela…….
Zoals
Vltchek terecht stelt: de westerse volkeren worden gehersenspoeld met ideeën dat Iran een fanatieke moslim staat is, echter daar is geen
bliksem van waar, vergeleken met de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE),
Saoedi-Arabië (S-A), Indonesië en Egypte en een land als Marokko, is Iran een moderne
staat met een uiterst moderne infrastructuur, idem architectuur en een
rijk cultureel leven. Terwijl de genoemde fanatieke moslimlanden niet worden getroffen door westerse sancties, maakt niet uit wat voor barbaarse misdaden ze begaan, moet het Iraanse volk boeten voor de enorme hypocrisie en machtswellust van het westen en de arabische dictatoriaal geregeerde staten……
Tja Iran is sjiitisch en dat ligt niet lekker bij die arabische soennitische staten, waar de VS uiteraard in het geniep wel het sociale karakter van Iran als een enorm ‘gevaar’ ziet, veronderstel dat een volk aan kan tonen prima en gelukkig te kunnen leven in een socialistische staat….. (‘brrr, je moet er niet aan denken….’)
Vrouwen in Iran spelen allesbehalve een ondergeschikte rol en je ziet dan ook regelmatig dat een vrouw haar man terechtwijst in het openbaar. (probeer dat maar eens in Saoedi-Arabië!)
Met
de nieuwe sancties probeert Washington Teheran op de knieën te
krijgen, maar dat zal waarschijnlijk niet lukken, daar China en
Rusland achter het land staan (zo is China bezig een deal met Teheran
te sluiten over levering van olie en gas, uiteraard zal dit ook
onderdeel zijn van nauwere economische samenwerking, zoals die met
Rusland al bestaat)
Lees
het uitstekende schrijven van Vltchek en oordeel zelf:
Have
you ever considered the possibility that almost everything that you
have been told about the world by the Western mass media is a lie and
fabrication?
I
am sure you have, at least lately, when the insanity of Western
propaganda is becoming very clear and obvious. But what about the
extent of indoctrination you were subjected to?
If
you live in Europe or North America, how poisoned are you by the lies
about Cuba and Venezuela, Russia and China, North Korea and yes –
about Iran? Are you beyond recovery? If you see the truth, if you
were confronted by reality, would you still be able to recognize it,
or would you perceive it as propaganda and lies?
I
have just left Tehran, a city with a tremendous history and culture,
overflowing with museums, theatres, wonderfully kept parks dotted
with modern art sculptures. It is a city with modern and fully
subsidized public transportation, consisting of high-tech metro,
ecological bus ways, as well as suburban trains. A city of tall
trees, and quiet squares, of elegant cafes, and extremely educated
and kind people.
A
city that could easily be part of the ‘top ten’ cities on Earth,
were it not be the capital of a country that the West is trying to
ruin, first with unjust and draconian sanctions, and then, who knows,
even by a militarily invasion.
What
do most Westerners know about Iran; what were they told? I think the
image the mass media outlets want to project is of “Iran – a
radical Muslim country, some sort of Shia Saudi Arabia”, or perhaps
worse. Much worse, as Saudi Arabia, the closest Arab ally of London
and Washington,cannot be touched in the West, no matter what
barbarity and terror it spreads all around the world.
Those
who know both Jeddah and Teheran would laugh at such a comparison.
Saudi Arabia, and its semi-colony Bahrain, despite their wealth from
oil, are some of the most compassionless societies on the planet,
misery rubbing shoulders with repulsively vulgar and extreme showing
off of wealth.
Iran
is in its essence a socialist country. It is internationalist, in
full solidarity with many oppressed and struggling nations on our
planet. No, I am not talking about Syria, Yemen or Palestine only; I
am talking about Cuba and Venezuela, among many others. You did not
know? It is not surprising: you are not supposed to know!
You
are also expected to remain ignorant about Iran’s social system,
clearly socialist. Free education and medical care, greatly
subsidized public transportation and culture, huge public spaces and
to some extent, strong government and at least partially, central
planning.
Despite
those absolutely unjust, terrible sanctions imposed, with some
interruptions, from Washington and its allies, Iran is standing tall,
trying as much as it can to take care of its people. And despite the
terrible ordeal Iranian people are being put through, they do not
cheat and do not steal. The exchange rate collapsed after Washington
imposed another round of bizarre sanctions, triggering frustration,
even protests.
But
the majority of Iranians understands who the real culprit is. And it
is no secret that the so-called opposition is often financed from the
West.
Most
visitors do not understand anything about the local currency or
exchange rates. I am no exception. I simply give taxi drivers or
waiters my wallet, and they only take what is due. I checked with my
Iranian colleagues: and the amount that is being taken is always
fair.
Iranians
do not display ‘arrogant pride’; they only show the determined,
decent and patriotic pride of a nation with thousands of years of
great culture which knows perfectly well that it is on the right side
of history.
You
were told ‘how religious Iran is’; I am sure you were. But unlike
in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, religion is not ‘being thrown into
your face’ here; it is not waved as a flag. In Iran, religion is
something internal, deep, which is expressed humbly and without
noise. While the mosques of Jakarta broadcast, for hours a day and
usingpowerful loudspeakers, entire sermons, while people are now
being thrown into jail for even criticizing this brutal imposition of
religion on the general public, in Tehran I could hardlyeven
detect Adhan(call
for prayer). Most of the local female Teheran city-dwellers only
cover their hair symbolically – one third or even just a quarter,
keeping most of their hair exposed.
But
the West would never inflict sanctions on Indonesia or antagonize it
in any other way, no matter how brutal it is to its own people:
Washington,
London and Canberra already ruined its socialist direction after the
US-orchestrated coup of 1965. Jakarta is now an obedient, turbo
capitalist, anti-Communist,
West-junk-food-and-crap-entertainment-loving society. It has nothing
public left. The elites have fully robbed the country on behalf of
the West. Religions in Indonesia are used to uphold the pro-Western
fascist regime.
Iran
is totally the opposite: its interpretation of religion is
‘traditional’, as it used to be before the West managed to derail
its essence in so many parts of the world. It is socialist,
compassionate, spiritual and yes – internationalist.
Unlike
in places like Jeddah or Jakarta, where going out to eat is now the
height of cultural life (and often the only option of how to ‘enjoy
the city’), Tehran offers high quality art cinemas (Iranian films
are some of the greatest and most intellectual in the world),
world-class museums and galleries, vast public spaces, as well as a
great number of sport and amusement public facilities, including
beautifully maintained parks.
You
want to hang from a rope and fly over a valley, near one of the
tallest TV towers on Earth – you can do it easily in Teheran. You
want to see a series of the latest Chinese art films –you can, at
the magnificent palace called the Cinema Museum. Or maybe Chekhov or
a Tennessee Williams theatre play, if you understand some Farsi?
Why not?
Of
course you can sit in a horrendous traffic jam, if you are in love
with your car, as you would in Riyadh or Jakarta, but you can also
zip through the city in comfort and cheaply, on board the super
modern metro system. You can walk on beautiful sidewalks, under tall
trees, some of which grow from the clean creaks that separate
driveways from pedestrian areas.
What
else were you told; that you cannot look into a woman’s eyes or you
will be stoned to death? Couples are holding hands everywhere in
Tehran, and annoyed girls are slapping the faces of their men,
teasingly and sometimes even seriously.
But
would you believe it, if you saw it? Or is it too late; have you
reached the point of no return?
One
day, a driver who was taking me from my hotel to the Press TV
television studio, exclaimed in desperation:
“Europeans
who come here, even for the first time: they don’t want to learn.
Even if they come to Iran for the first time, they land at the
airport, get into my car, and begin preaching; teaching me about my
own country! They all come with the same story, with the same
criticism of Iran. There is no diversity! How can they call
themselves democratic countries, if they are all thinking the same
way?”
In
Teheran, the diversity of thought is absolutely striking. With my
colleagues and comrades, we discuss everything from the war in
Yugoslavia, to Latin America and of course, Iran itself. They want to
know about Russia and China. I love what I see and what I hear –
when people are curious and respectful of other cultures, it is
always a great start!
Iran
is bleeding, suffering, but it is strong. Not everyone agrees with
government policies here (although most of them do support their
government), but everybody is determined to fight and defend his or
her country, if it is attacked militarily or by other means.
Whenever
I come here, I have this impolite urge – I want to shout at my
readers: Come here and learn something! Iran is not perfect, but this
is real – here, life is real and so are the people.
Thanks
to their culture and history, they somehow know how to separate
precious stones from junk, pure thoughts from propaganda, cheap and
deadly capitalism from the great strive for a much better world. If
you don’t believe me, just watch their films; one masterpiece after
another.
Perhaps
that is why the West wants to first ruin, and then to totally destroy
this country. For the West, Iran is ‘dangerous’. Iran is
dangerous, even deadly,for the imperialist arrangement of the world,
as China is dangerous, as Russia is, as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and
Bolivia are.
To
ruin Iran will not be easy, I would even say: it could prove
impossible. Its people are too smart and determined and strong. Iran
is not alone; it has many friends and comrades. And even Iran’s
neighbors – Turkey and Pakistan – are now quickly changing
direction, away from the West.
Don’t
take my word for all this. Just come and see. But do no preach: ask
questions, and then, please sit, listen and learn! This country has
more than 7,000 years of tremendous history. Instead of bombing it,
read its poets, watch its films, and learn from its internationalist
stand! And then, only then, decide, whether Iran is really your
enemy, or a dear comrade and friend.
[First
published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]
Andre
Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative
journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries.
Three of his latest books are Revolutionary
Optimism, Western Nihilism, a
revolutionary novel “Aurora” and
a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing
Lies Of The Empire”.
View his other books here.
Watch Rwanda
Gambit,
his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his
film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On
Western Terrorism”.
Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and
continues to work around the world. He can be reached through
his website and
his Twitter.
Dan nog wat links naar berichten over de werkelijke agressor in onze wereld >> de VS: Alleen vanaf 1945 tot het jaar 2000 heeft de VS al 20 miljoen mensen vermoord (deze eeuw al meer dan 2 miljoen, hoewel deskundigen al spreken over een aantal van meer dan 2,5 miljoen…), zie: ‘VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘ Zie verder:
Het
volgende uitstekende artikel van Paul Street handelt over de lessen
van Martin Luther King (in de VS vaak aangeduid als MLK) waarover men in de VS en de rest van het westen
liever niet spreekt, dit daar in zijn visie o.a. alleen echte gelijkheid kan
ontstaan in een vorm van socialisme………
Het is op 4 april a.s. 50 jaar geleden dat de staat dr. Martin Luther King liet vermoorden….. Vandaar veel aandacht dit jaar voor deze vrijheid en gelijkheidsstrijder. In de VS is 15 januari, de geboortedag van MLK, een vrije dag: ‘Martin Luther King Day’. Een uiterst hypocriet gebeuren als je het Paul Street vraagt, daar men vooral niet spreekt over de ideeën die King had over de ideale maatschappij en de vorm van bestuur die alle burgers ten goede zou komen, niet alleen de witte midden en hoge inkomens. Een wereld waarin arbeiders niet langer uitgebuit worden door en voor de ondernemers en aandeelhouders (en welgestelden in het algemeen).
Zo is echt socialisme of communisme een oplossing voor veel van de huidige ellende in de wereld. Vergeet niet dat communisme tot nu toe nooit heeft bestaan in onze wereld. Wat betreft socialisme kan je het Chili van Allende, Cuba van Fidel Castro en Venezuela onder Chavez en Maduro aanwijzen als voorbeelden (ook al was en is dit nog niet zoals het zou moeten zijn, echter wel zo goed dat de arme bevolking een veel beter leven kreeg, inclusief gezondheidszorg, een fatsoenlijk dak boven het hoofd en alfabetisering. Vandaar ook dat de VS zo haar best doet daar een eind aan te maken, wat tot nu toe al een aantal keren is gelukt, neem de uiterst bloedige staatsgreep tegen de democratisch gekozen regering van president Salvador Allende op 11 september 1973 in Chili, waarbij Allende strijdend werd vermoord…….. (betaald door- en onder regie en mede verantwoording van de CIA…..)
Momenteel is de VS naast het voeren van illegale oorlogen bezig met een economische oorlog tegen Venezuela, helaas is een heel groot deel van de Venezolaanse bevolking op de hoogte van de smerige streken die de VS het land levert (stop op leveringen van medicijnen en levensmiddelen) dat ze aan de kant van Maduro blijven staan. (dit nog naast de door de CIA georganiseerde gewelddadige protesten in Venezuela….)
De kijk van MLK op de wereld was volgens de schrijver van het volgende artikel, Paul Street, de reden waarom de overheid in de VS King alleen wil herdenken als strijder voor gelijke rechten t.b.v. gekleurde burgers……. Men leidt willens en wetens de aandacht af van de visie die King had op de VS en de wereld in het groot. Street spreekt dan ook (terecht) van een voortdurende morele en intellectuele moord op Martin Luther Kung………. (‘vreemd genoeg’ is er ook in de EU amper of geen aandacht voor de linkse kant van King….)
Zijn visie op de wereld, gecombineerd met zijn charisma is dan ook de reden waarom Martin Luther King ‘een bedreiging was’ voor de overheid en ‘wel vermoord moest worden…..’
As
the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s violent death (on
April 4, 1968) grows closer, you can expect to hear more and more in
U.S. corporate media about the real and alleged details of his
immediate physical assassination (or perhaps execution). You
will not be told about King’s subsequent and ongoing moral,
intellectual, and ideological assassination.
I
am referring to the conventional, neo-McCarthyite, and whitewashed
narrative of King that is purveyed across the nation every year,
especially during and around the national holiday that bears his
name. This domesticated, bourgeois airbrushing portrays King as
a mild liberal reformist who wanted little more than a few basic
civil rights adjustments in a supposedly good and decent American
System – a loyal supplicant who was grateful to the nation’s
leaders for finally making noble alterations. This year was no
exception.
The
official commemorations never say anything about the Dr. King who
studied Marx sympathetically at a young age and who said in his last
years that “if we are to achieve real equality, the United States
will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.” They delete
the King who wrote that “the real issue to be faced” beyond
“superficial” matters was the need for a radical social
revolution.
It
deletes the King
who went on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in late
1967 to
reflect on how little the Black freedom struggle had attained beyond
some fractional changes in the South. He deplored “the arresting of
the limited forward progress” Blacks and their allies had attained
“by [a] white resistance [that] revealed the latent racism that was
[still] deeply rooted in U.S. society.”
“As
elation and expectations died,” King explained on the CBC, “Negroes
became more sharply aware that the goal of freedom was still distant
and our immediate plight was substantially still an agony of
deprivation. In the past decade, little has been done for Northern
ghettoes. Al the legislation was to remedy Southern conditions –
and even these were only partially improved.”
Worse
than merely limited, King felt, the gains won by Black Americans
during what he considered just the “first phase” of their freedom
struggle (1955-1965) were dangerous in that they “brought whites a
sense of completion” – a preposterous impression that the
so-called “Negro problem” had been solved and that there was
therefore no more basis or justification for further black activism.
“When Negroes assertively moved on to ascend to the second rung of
the ladder,” King noted, “a firm resistance from the white
community developed…In some quarters it was a courteous rejection,
in others it was a singing white backlash. In all quarters
unmistakably, it was outright resistance.”
Explaining
to his CBC listeners the remarkable wave of race riots that washed
across U.S. cities in the summers of 1966 and 1967, King made no
apologies for Black violence. He blamed “the white power
structure…still seeking to keep the walls of segregation and
inequality intact” for the disturbances. He found the leading cause
of the riots in the reactionary posture of “the white society,
unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change,”
which” produc[ed] chaos” by telling Blacks (whose expectations
for substantive change had been aroused) “that they must expect to
remain permanently unequal and permanently poor.”
King
also blamed the riots in part on Washington’s imperialist and
mass-murderous war on Vietnam. Along with the misery it inflicted on
Indochina, King said, the United States’ savage military aggression
against Southeast Asia stole resources from Lyndon Johnson’s
briefly declared and barely fought “War on Poverty.” It sent poor
Blacks to the front killing lines to a disproportionate degree. It
advanced the notion that violence was a reasonable response and even
a solution to social and political problems.
Black
Americans and others sensed what King called “the cruel irony of
watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die
together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in
the same school. We watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts
of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the
same block in Detroit,” King said on the CBC, adding that he “could
not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”
Racial
hypocrisy aside, King said that “a nation that continues year after
year to spend more money on military defense [here he might better
have said “military empire”] than on programs of social uplift is
approaching spiritual doom.”
Did
the rioters disrespect the law, as their liberal and conservative
critics alike charged? Yes, King said, but added that the rioters’
transgressions were “derivative crimes…born of the
greater crimes of the…policy-makers of the white society,”
who “created discrimination…created slums [and] perpetuate
unemployment, ignorance, and poverty… [T]he
white man,”
King elaborated, “does
not abide by law in
the ghetto. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive
the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building
codes and regulations; his
police make a mockery of law;
he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provision
of public services. The slums are a handiwork of a
vicious system of
the white society.”
Did
the rioters engage in violence? Yes, King said, but noted that their
aggression was “to a startling degree…focused against property
rather than against people.” He observed that “property
represents the white power structure,
which [the rioters] were [quite understandably] attacking and trying
to destroy.” Against those who held property “sacred,” King
argued that “Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how
much we surround with rights and respect, it has no personal being.”
What
to do? King advanced radical changes that went against the grain of
the nation’s corporate state, reflecting his agreement with New
Left militants that “only
by structural change can current evils be eliminated, because the
roots are in the system rather in man or faulty operations.”
King advocated an emergency national program providing either
decent-paying jobs for all or a guaranteed national income “at
levels that sustain life in decent circumstances.” He also called
for the “demolition of slums and rebuilding by the population that
lives in them.”
His
proposals, he said, aimed for more than racial justice alone. Seeking
to abolish poverty for all, including poor whites, he felt that “the
Negro revolt” was properly challenging each of what he called “the
interrelated triple evils” of racism, economic injustice/poverty
(capitalism) and war (militarism and imperialism).
The Black struggle had thankfully “evolve[ed] into more than a
quest for [racial] desegregation and equality,” King said. It
had become “a challenge to a system that has created miracles of
production and technology” but had failed to “create justice.”
“If
humanism is locked outside the [capitalist] system,” King said
on CBC five months before his assassination (or execution), “Negroes
will have revealed its inner core of despotism and a far greater
struggle for liberation will unfold. The United States is
substantially challenged to demonstrate that it can abolish not only
the evils of racism but the scourge of poverty and the horrors of
war….”
No
careful listener to King’s CBC talks could have missed the
radicalism of his vision and tactics. “The dispossessed of this
nation – the poor, both White and Negro – live in a
cruelly unjust society,”
King said. “They must organize
a revolution against
that injustice,” he added.
Such
a revolution would require “more than a statement to the larger
society,” more than “street marches” King proclaimed. “There
must,” he added, “be a
force that interrupts [that society’s] functioning at some key
point.”
That force would use “mass civil disobedience” to “transmute
the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force”
by “dislocate[ing]
the functioning of a society.”
“The
storm is rising against
the privileged minority of
the earth,” King added for good measure. “The storm will not
abate until [there is a] just
distribution of the fruits of the earth…”
The “massive,
active, nonviolent resistance to the evils of the modern system”
that King advocated was “international in scope,” reflecting the
fact that “the poor countries are poor primarily because [rich
Western nations] have exploited them through political or economic
colonialism. Americans in particular must help their nation repent of
her modern economic imperialism.”
King
was a democratic socialist mass-disobedience-advocating and
anti-imperialist world revolution advocate. The guardians of
national memory don’t want you to know about that when they purvey
the official, doctrinally imposed memory of King as an at most
liberal and milquetoast reformer. (In a similar vein, our ideological
overlords don’t want us to know that Albert Einstein
[Time magazine’s
“Person of the 20th Century”] wrote a
brilliant essay making the case for socialism in
the first issue of venerable U.S.-Marxist magazine Monthly Review
– or that Helen Keller was a fan of the Russian Revolution.)
The
threat posed to the official bourgeois memory by King’s CBC
lectures – and by much more that King said and wrote in the last
three years of his life – is not just that they show an officially
iconic gradualist reformer to have been a democratic socialist
opponent of the profits system and its empire. It is also about how
clearly King analyzed the incomplete and unfinished nature of the
nation’s progress against racial and class injustice, around which
all forward developments pretty much ceased in the 1970s, thanks to a
white backlash that was already well underway in the early and
mid-1960s (before the rise of the Black Panthers, who liberal
historians like to blame for the nation’s rightward racial drift
under Nixon and Reagan) and to a top-down corporate war on
working-class Americans that started under Jimmy Carter and then went
ballistic under Ronald Reagan.
The
“spiritual doom” imposed by U.S. militarism has lived on, with
Washington having directly and indirectly killed untold millions of
Central Americans, South Americans, Africans, Muslims, Arabs, and
Asians in many different ways over the years since Vietnam.
Accounting for roughly 40 percent of the world’s military
expenditure, the U.S. maintains Cold War-level “defense” (empire)
budgets to sustain an historically unmatched global empire (with at
least 800 military bases spread across more than 80 foreign
countries and
“troops or other military personnel in about 160 foreign
countries and territories”) even as a near-record 45 million
U.S.-Americans remain
stuck under
the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level. A
very disproportionate number of the nation’s poor are Black and
Latino/a.
It
is obvious that the racist and white-supremacist real estate baron
Donald J. Trump spoke disingenuously in tongue when he mouthed nice
words about Dr. King last Monday. But what about his
predecessor, Barack Obama, the nation’s first technically Black
president? It was cruelly ironic that Obama kept a bust of King in
the Oval Office to watch over his regular betrayal of the martyred
peace and justice leader’s ideals. Consistent with Dr. Adolph Reed
Jr.’s early (1996) dead-on
description of
the future President as “a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable
credentials and vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics,” Obama
consistently backed top corporate and financial interests (whose
representatives filled and dominated his administrations, campaigns,
and campaign coffers) over and against those who would undertake
serious programs to end poverty, redistribute wealth (the savage
re-concentration of which since Dr. King’s time has produced a New
Gilded Age in the U.S.), grant free and universal health care,
constrain capital, and save livable ecology as it approached a number
of critical tipping points on the accelerating path to irreversible
catastrophe. Thus is that one of Obama’s supporters (Ezra
Klein)
was moved in late 2012 to complain that a president “whose platform
consists of Romney’s health care bill, Newt Gingrich’s
environmental policies, John McCain’s deficit-financed payroll tax
cuts, George W. Bush’s bailouts of filing banks and corporations,
and a mixture of the Bush and Clinton tax rate” was still being
denounced as a “leftist.”
Obama
opposed calls for any special programs or serious federal attention
to the nation’s savage racial inequalities, so vast now that the
median of white households was 20 times that of black households and
18 times that of Hispanic households near the end of his presidency.
He did this while the fact of his ascendency to the White House
deeply reinforced white America’s sense that racism was over as a
barrier to black advancement and generated its own significant white
backlash that only worsened the situation of less privileged black
Americans.
Obama
made it crystal clear in ways that no white president could that what
Dr. King in 1963 called America’s unpaid “promissory note” and
“bad check” to Black America would remain un-cashed. This was all
too sadly consistent with Obama’s preposterous 2007 campaign claim
(at a commemoration of the King-led 1965 Selma Voting Rights March)
to believe that Blacks had already come “90
percent” of
the way to equality in the U.S.
Completing
the “triple evils” hat trick, Obama – the self-appointed
chief-executioner atop the Special Forces Global War on (of) Terror
Kill List – embraced and expanded upon the vast criminal and
worldwide spying and killing operation he inherited from Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush. He tamped down
Bush’s failed ground wars only to ramp up and inflate the role of
unaccountable special force and drone attacks in the spirit of his
dashing and reckless imperial role model John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Obama’s drone program, Noam Chomsky noted in early
2015,
was “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.” It
“target[ed] people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some
day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby,” Chomsky wrote.
In
waging his deadly and disastrous, nation-wrecking and regionally
destabilizing air war on Libya, Obama (unlike Bush prior to the
invasion of Iraq) did not even bother with the pretense of seeking
Congressional approval. “It should be a scandal,”
Stansfield Smith wrote
on CounterPunch one
year ago,
“that left-liberals paint Trump as a special threat, a war mongerer
– [but] not Obama who is the first president to be at war every day
of his eight years, who is waging seven wars at present, who dropped
three bombs an hour, 24 hours a day, in 2016.” As Alan
Nairn told Democracy
Now’s
Amy Goodman in early 2010,
Obama kept the nation’s giant imperial machinery “set on kill.”
Meanwhile,
Obama far surpassed the Cheney-Bush regime when it came to repressing
antiwar dissenters, not to mention those who opposed the rule of the
1 percent – smashed by a coordinated federal campaign in the fall
of 2011. “As all kinds of journalists have continuously pointed
out,” Glenn
Greenwald noted in
early 2014, “the Obama administration is more aggressive and more
vindictive when it comes to punishing whistleblowers than any
administration in American history, including the Nixon
administration.”
Furthermore,
and to make matters far worse, Obama helped keep the planet set on
burn. As Stansfield Smith noted two days before the horrid
Trump’s inauguration:
Obama,
who says he recognizes the threat to humanity posed by climate
change, still invested at least $34 billion to promote fossil fuel
projects in other countries. That is three times as much as George W
Bush spent in his two terms, almost twice that of Ronald Reagan,
George HW Bush and Bill Clinton put together…Obama financed 70
foreign fossil fuel projects. When completed they will release 164
million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year
– about the same output as the 95 currently operating coal-fired
power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. He financed two
natural gas plants on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as
two of the largest coalmines on the planet… Moreover, under Obama,
the U.S. has reversed the steady drop in U.S. oil production
which had continued unchecked since 1971. The U.S. was pumping just
5.1 million barrels per day when Obama took office. By April 2016 it
was up to 8.9 million barrels per day. A 74% increase.
As
Obama proudly said in 2012, in the film This
Changes Everything:
‘Over
the last three years I’ve directed my administration to open up
millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different
states. We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil
resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs
to a record high. We’ve added enough oil and gas pipelines to
encircle the earth and then some. So, we are drilling all over the
place, right now.’
“Drill,
baby, drill!”
Perhaps
the dismal neoliberal Obama presidency – a key midwife to the Trump
atrocity – was at least an object lesson on how real progressive
and democratic change is about something bigger than a change in the
party or color of the people in nominal power. That is certainly
something King (who would be 88 today) would have understood very
well had he been able to witness the endless mendacity of the
nation’s first half-white president first-hand.
“The
black revolution,” King wrote in a
posthumously published 1969 essay titled
“A Testament of Hope” (embracing a very different, authentically
progressive sort of hope than that purveyed by Brand Obama in 2008)
“is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is
forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism,
poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are
rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals
systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical
reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be
faced.”
Those
words ring as true as ever today, with heightened urgency as it
becomes undeniable that the profits system is driving
humanity over an environmental cliff. They
are words we never hear during official King Day commemorations.
King,
it is worth recalling, was recruited by antiwar progressives to run
for the U.S. presidency in 1967. He politely declined, claiming that
he’d have little chance of winning and that he preferred to serve
as a force of moral conscience for all the nation’s political
parties.
The
deeper truth, clear from his late-life writing and speeches, is that
he had no interest in climbing into the power elite: his passion was
directed toward a “revolution” of “the dispossessed” and a
mass grassroots movement for the redistribution of wealth and power –
a “radical reconstruction of society itself” – from the bottom
up. Dr. King was interested in what the late radical U.S.
historian Howard
Zinn considered the
more urgent politics of “who’s
sitting in the streets,”
very different from what Zinn saw as the comparatively superficial
politics of “who’s
sitting in the White House.”
King’s
officially deleted radical record and Zinn’s clever and sage
dichotomy are worth bearing in mind in coming months and years as we
watch the nation’s “left” liberals try to call forth and herald
a new Obama (Oprah perhaps?) in 2020. That is certainly one of
the last things we need.
False Flag operaties ofwel terreur, dit is het moedwillig schade toebrengen aan eigen zaken dan wel zaken als het vermoorden van eigen burgers of burgers elders, met de opzet een tegenstander de schuld te geven, worden afgedaan als samenzweringstheorieën of complottheorieën. Echter een groot aantal feiten en bekentenissen bewijzen dat deze terreur wel degelijk bestaat en dat al heel lang………
In feite werd dit al duidelijk uit de Vault 7 en Vault 8 documenten op Wikileaks, waaruit bleek, dat de CIA en NSA over een groot aantal ‘instrumenten’ beschikken, waarmee men via het internet zaken kan manipuleren door te hacken en de schuld daarvoor in de schoenen van een ‘vijandige’ staat kan schuiven. in feite een ‘false flag’ operatie………
VS Generaal H.R. McMaster zei gisteren dat de vijanden van de VS, Rusland en China, plus extreem rechtse en linkse activisten vitriool spuien op het internet om het volk aan het twijfelen te brengen over de maatschappij waarin zij leven…… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! E.e.a. werd een uur geleden gemeld op BBC World Service (rond 12.09 u. CET), ook al kan McMaster niet één bewezen feit opnoemen (zoals gewoonlijk in dit soort angst- en haatzaaierij)……. Als er nu één ‘land’ is dat zich wel bewezen met dergelijke zaken bezighoudt, is het de VS zelf wel!!
Van een aantal zaken was ik wel op de hoogte en toch verbaasde mij het enorme aantal ‘false flag operaties’, die niet zelden tot een enorm aantal moorden, nou zeg maar gerust ‘massamoorden’ hebben geleid, neem de aanleiding voor de illegale oorlogen die de VS voerde tegen Noord-Vietnam (plus tegelijkertijd in het geheim tegen andere landen in de regio) en Irak…..
Ook terreuraanslagen in Europa waren niet zelden ‘false flag operaties’, ofwel ‘false flag terreur…’
Overigens niets nieuws onder de zon, er bestaan al meer dan 2.000 jaar van dit soort operaties.
Het volgende artikel vond ik op het blog van Stan van Houcke, het origineel komt van Newsweek (een regulier nieuwsmedium*), van Houcke nam het over van WashingtonsBlog. Lezen mensen en geeft het door, je weet niet wat je leest!! Hiermee maken wat mij betreft de uitdragers van ‘Russische manipulaties’ in de VS presidentsverkiezingen en manipulaties in EU landen, zich voorgoed totaal ongeloofwaardig (al waren deze beweringen al langer bewezen lariekoek).
There
Are Now So Many Admissions by Government Officials of False Flag
Terror that Only the Willfully Ignorant Still Doubt the Reality
of the Concept
Presidents,
Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police
ADMIT to False Flag Terror
Scores
of government officials throughout the world have admitted (either
orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos) to carrying out
– or seriously proposing – false flag attacks:
Japanese
troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and
falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of
Manchuria. This is known
as the
“Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo
International Military Tribunal found:
“Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a
high-ranking Japanese army officer], have
on various occasions admitted their
part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’
was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the
Kwantung Army ….” And see this,
this and this.
(2)
A major with the Nazi SS admitted at
the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the
Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked several attacks
on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to
justify the invasion of Poland. The staged attacks included:
The
German radio station at Gleiwitz [details below]
The
strategic railway at Jabłonków Pass, located on the border between
Poland and Czechoslovakia
The
German customs station at Hochlinden
The
forest service station in Pitschen
The
communications station at Neubersteich
The
railroad station in Alt-Eiche
A
woman and her companion in Katowice
The
details of the Gleiwitz radio station incident include:
On
the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives
dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz
station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources
vary on the content of the message). The Germans’ goal was to make
the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish
saboteurs.
To
make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans used human corpses
to pass them off as Polish attackers. They murdered Franciszek
Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer known
for sympathizing with the Poles. He had been arrested the previous
day by the Gestapo. He was dressed to look like a saboteur, then
killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at
the scene so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the
station. His corpse was subsequently presented to the police and
press as proof of the attack.
The
minutes of the high command of the Italian government –
subsequently approved by Mussolini himself – admitted that
violence on the Greek-Albanian border was carried out by Italians
and falsely blamed on the Greeks, as an excuse for Italy’s 1940
invasion of Greece.
Nazi
general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that
Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to
setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then
falsely blaming the communists for the arson.
Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in
writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian
village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland –
as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland.
Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that
Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.
The
Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former
Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute
22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely
blamed it on the Nazis.
The
British government admits that
– between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews who
were Holocaust survivors attempting to flee to safety in Palestine
right after World War II, set up a fake group called “Defenders of
Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim
responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).
Israel admits that
in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs
in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then
left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits
(one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to
identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed)
(and see this and this).
The
U.S. Army does not believe this is an isolated incident. For example,
the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies said of
Mossad (Israel’s intelligence service):
“Ruthless
and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make
it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”
And
former Israeli Prime Moshe Minister admitted in
his diary:
I
have been meditating on the long chain of false
incidents and hostilities we have invented,
and on the many clashes we have provoked which cost us so much blood
….
The
CIA admits that
it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage
bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its
democratically-elected prime minister.
(10)
The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that
the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish
consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the
founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose
of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.
Starting
in the 1950s Turkey’s deep state sponsored killings, engineered
riots, colluded with drug traffickers, staged “false flag”
attacks and organised massacres of trade unionists. Thousands died in
the chaos it fomented.
The
British Prime Minister admitted to
his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight
Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and
blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.
In
1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that
the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would
give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then
give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]”.
Official
State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint
Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing
up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an
invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they
were all discussed as serious proposals.
(15)
As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents
show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a
plan to blow
up AMERICAN airplanes (using
an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also
to commit
terrorist acts on American soil,
and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of
Cuba. See the following ABC
news report; the
official documents;
and watch this
interview with
the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News
Tonight with Peter Jennings. This plan was
subsequently admitted again
in other declassified government documents.
Provocations
considered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff included:
Sink
ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims ….
***
3.
A “Remember the Maine” incident could be arranged in several
forms:
a.
We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.
b.
We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban
waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of
Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from the
air or sea, or both. The presence of Cuban planes or ships merely
investigating the intent of the vessel could be fairly compelling
evidence that the ship was taken under attack. The nearness to Havana
or Santiago would add credibility especially to those people that
might have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could follow
up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to
“evacuate” remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty
lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national
indignation.
4.
We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area,
in other Florida cities and even in Washington.
The terror
campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the
United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida
(real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban
refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in
instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in
carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of
prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be
helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.
***
6.
Use of MIG type aircraft by US pilots could provide additional
provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and
destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be
useful as complementary actions. An F-86 properly painted would
convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the
pilot of the transport were to announce such fact. The primary
drawback to this suggestion appears to be the security risk inherent
in obtaining or modifying an aircraft. However, reasonable copies of
the MIG could be produced from US resources in about three months.
***
8.
it is possible to create an incident which will
demonstrate
convincingly that a Cuban-aircraft has attacked and
shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States
to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be
chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba, The
passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or
any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering
a non-scheduled flight.
a.
An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact
duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA
proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the
duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and
would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under
carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be
converted to a drone.
b.
Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be
scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous
point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum
altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where
arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and
return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft
meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba
the drone will being transmitting on the inter-national distress
frequency a “MAY DAY” message stating he is under attack by Cuban
MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of
the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow
ICAO radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to “tell” the US
what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to “sell”
the incident.
9.
It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that
Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over
international waters in an unprovoked attack.
a.
Approximately 4 or 5 F-101 aircraft-will be dispatched in trail from
Homestead AFB, Florida, to the vicinity of Cuba. Their mission will
be to reverse course and simulate fakir aircraft for an air defense
exercise in southern Florida. These aircraft would conduct variations
of these flights at frequent intervals. Crews would be briefed to
remain at least 12 miles off the Cuban coast; however, they would be
required to carry live ammunition in the event that hostile actions
were taken by the Cuban MiGs.
b.
On One such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly tail-end Charley at
considerable interval between aircraft. While near the Cuban Island
this pilot would broadcast that he had been Jumped by MIGs and was
going down. No other calls would be made. The pilot would then fly
directly west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an
Eglin auxiliary. The aircraft would be met by the proper people,
quickly stored and given a new tail number. The pilot who had
performed the mission under an alias, would resume his proper
identity and return to his normal place of business. The pilot and
aircraft would then have disappeared.
c.
At precisely the same time that the aircraft was presumably shot down
a submarine or small surface craft would disburse F-101 parts,
parachute, etc., at approximately 15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast
and depart.
U.S.
government documents declassified in October 2017 admitted that
a very high-level 1962 meeting of U.S. government officials –
separate from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – also discussed:
The
possibility of U.S.
manufacture or acquisition of Soviet aircraft ….
There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a
deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to
launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a
provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack
U.S. or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for U.S.
intervention.
In
1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks
on nations within the Organization of American States – such as
Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on
Cuba.
The
U.S. Department of Defense also suggested covertly
paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United
States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be
to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an
attack on Guantanamo.”
A
U.S. Congressional committee admitted that
– as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had
used many provocateurs
in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely
blame them on political activists.
A top Turkish
general admitted that
Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and
blamed it on their enemy. He explained:
“In Special War, certain acts
of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to
increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt
down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s
incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.
(20)
A declassified 1973
CIA document reveals a
program to train foreign police and troops on how to make booby
traps, pretending that they were training them on how
to investigate terrorist
acts:
The
Agency maintains liaison in varying degrees with foreign
police/security organizations through its field stations ….
[CIA
provides training sessions as follows:]
a.
Providing trainees with basic
knowledge in the uses of commercial and military demolitions and
incendiaries as
they may be applied in terrorism and industrial sabotage operations.
b.
Introducing the trainees to commercially
available materials and home laboratory techniques,
likely to he used in the manufacture of explosives and incendiaries
by terrorists or saboteurs.
c.
Familiarizing the trainees with the concept of target
analysis and operational planning that
a saboteur or terrorist must employ.
d.
Introducing the trainees to booby trapping devices and techniques
giving practical
experience with
both manufactured and improvised devices through
actual fabrication.
***
The
program provides the trainees with ample
opportunity to develop basic familiarity and use proficiently through
handling, preparing and applying the various explosive charges,
incendiary agents, terrorist devices and sabotage techniques.
The
German government admitted (and see
this)
that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the
outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner
– a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service
wished to frame the bombing on.
A
Mossad agent admits that,
in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound
in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions
recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist
supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.
The
South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that,
in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South
African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him
“to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the
African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the
investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the
ANC for the bombing.
An
Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian
army admit that,
in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian
civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and
see this
video;
and see Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French
Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).
In
1993, a bomb in Northern Ireland killed 9 civilians. Official
documents from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (i.e. the British
government) show that
the mastermind of the bombing was a British agent, and that the
bombing was designed to inflame sectarian tensions. And
see this and this.
The
United States Army’s 1994 publication Special
Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures
for Special Forces –
updated in 2004 – recommends employing
terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist
regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried
out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA’s “Dirty
Wars“.
And see
this.
(27)
Similarly, a CIA “psychological operations” manual prepared by a
CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the
value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr”
for the cause. The manual was authenticated by
the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from
Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that –
during the 1984 presidential debate – President Reagan
was confronted with
the following question on national television:
At
this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA
guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing,
which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring
of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order
to create martyrs.
A
Rwandan government inquiry admitted that
the 1994 shootdown and murder of the Rwandan president, who was from
the Hutu tribe
– a murder blamed by the Hutus on the rival Tutsi tribe,
and which led to the massacre of more than 800,000 Tutsis by Hutus –
was committed by Hutu soldiers
and falsely blamed on the Tutis.
Senior
Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that
the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely
blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya
(and see this
report and this
discussion).
As
reported by the New
York Times, BBC and Associated
Press,
Macedonian officials admit that in 2001, the government murdered 7
innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al
Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order
to join the “war on terror”. They lured foreign migrants into
the country, executed them in a staged gun battle, and then claimed
they were a unit backed by Al Qaeda intent on attacking Western
embassies”. Specifically, Macedonian authorities had lured the
immigrants into the country, and then – after killing them –
posed the victims with planted evidence – “bags of uniforms and
semiautomatic weapons at their side” – to show Western
diplomats.
At
the July 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, black-clad thugs
were videotaped getting
out of police cars, and were seen by
an Italian MP carrying “iron bars inside the police station”.
Subsequently, senior police officials in Genoa admitted that
police planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a
police officer at the G8 Summit, in order to justify a violent
crackdown against
protesters.
The
U.S. falsely
blamed Iraq for
playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo
from the defense secretary –
as one of the main
justifications for
launching the Iraq war. Even
after the 9/11 Commission admitted that
there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that
the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship
with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had
information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was
not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S.
government officials now admit that
the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of
mass destruction.
Despite
previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials
now say that
9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the
state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials
have allegedthat
9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S.
government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion.
The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when
it knew Iraq
had nothing to do with it.).
According
to the Washington
Post,
Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American
teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan
separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist
organization.
The
well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that
the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.
(38)
In 2003, the U.S. Secretary of Defense admitted that
interrogators were authorized to use the following method:
False
Flag: Convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other
than the United States are interrogating him.
While
not a traditional false flag attack,
this deception could lead to former detainees – many
of whom were tortured –
attacking the country falsely blamed for the interrogation and
torture.
Former
Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in
2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having
“our intelligence agencies create a false
terrorist organization.
It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps,
and fundraising operations. It could launchfake
terrorist operations and
claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion
within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’
identities and to question the validity of communications.”
Similarly,
in 2005, Professor John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School –
a renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept
of ‘netwar’ – called
for western
intelligence services to create
new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups,
as a way of undermining “real” terror networks. According to
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Arquilla’s
‘pseudo-gang’ strategy was, Hersh reported, already
being implemented by
the Pentagon:
“Under
Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would
be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking
to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons
systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local
citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or
terrorists…
The
new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it
calls ‘action teams’ in the target countries overseas which can
be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. ‘Do
you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?’ the
former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the
military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early
nineteen-eighties. ‘We founded them and we financed them,’ he
said. ‘The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want.
And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.’ A former military
officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities,
said, ‘We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.’”
(41)
United Press International reported in
June 2005:
U.S.
intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in
Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem
to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to
have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a
production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack
of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for
intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial
government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably
from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent
provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S.
authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of
the illegitimacy of the resistance.
In
2005, British
soldiers dressed
as Arabs were caught by Iraqi police after a shootout against the
police. The British soldiers shot two Iraqi policemen, killing
one.
The soldiers apparently possessed
explosives,
and were accused of
attempting to set
off bombs.
While none of the soldiers admitted that they were carrying out
attacks, British soldiers and a column of 10 British tanks stormed
the jail they were held in, broke
down a wall of the jail, and busted them out.
The extreme measures used to free the soldiers – rather than have
them face questions and potentially stand trial – could be
considered an admission.
Undercover
Israeli soldiers admitted in
2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could
blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful
protests by the Palestinians.
Quebec
police admitted that,
in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually
undercover Quebec police officers (and see
this).
A
2008 US Army special operations field manual recommends that
the U.S. military use surrogate non-state groups such as
“paramilitary forces, individuals, businesses, foreign political
organizations, resistant or insurgent organizations,
expatriates, transnational
terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism
members,
black marketers, and other social or political ‘undesirables.’”
The manual specifically acknowledged that U.S. special operations
can involve both counterterrorism and “Terrorism” (as well as
“transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking,
illicit arms-dealing, and illegal financial transactions.”)
He
should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior … infiltrate
the movement with agents provocateurs inclined
to do anything …. And after that, with the strength of the gained
population consent, … beat
them for blood and beat for blood also
those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the
elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes.
An
undercover officer admitted that
he infiltrated environmental, leftwing and anti-fascist groups in 22
countries. Germany’s federal police chief admitted that
– while the undercover officer worked for the German police – he
acted illegally during a G8 protest in Germany in 2007 and committed
arson by setting fire during a subsequent demonstration in Berlin.
The undercover officer spent many years living
with violent
“Black Bloc” anarchists.
Denver
police admitted that
uniformed officers deployed in 2008 to an area where alleged
“anarchists” had planned to wreak havoc outside the Democratic
National Convention ended up getting into a melee with two
undercover policemen. The uniformed officers didn’t know the
undercover officers were cops.
At
the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of
parliament saw plain
clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.
The
oversight agency for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police admitted that
– at the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010 – undercover police
officers were arrested with a group of protesters. Videos and photos
(see this and this,
for example) show that violent protesters wore very similar boots
and other gear as the police, and carried police batons. The Globe
and Mail reports that
the undercover officers planned the targets for violent attack, and
the police failed to stop the attacks.
Egyptian
politicians admitted (and see
this)
that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts 2011 to
try to discredit the protesters.
Austin
police admit that
3 officers infiltrated the Occupy protests in that city.
Prosecutors admit that
one of the undercover officers purchased and constructed illegal
“lock boxes” which ended up getting many protesters arrested.
In
2011, a Colombian colonel admitted that
he and his soldiers had lured 57 innocent civilians and killed them
– after dressing many of them in uniforms – as part of a scheme
to claim that Columbia was eradicating left-wing terrorists. And see
this.
Rioters
who discredited the peaceful protests against the swearing in of the
Mexican president in 2012 admitted that
they were paid 300 pesos each to destroy everything in their path.
According to Wikipedia, photos also show the
vandals waiting in groups behind police lines prior to the violence.
On
November 20, 2014, Mexican agent provocateurs were transported by
army vehicles to participate in the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping
protests, as was shown by
videos and pictures distributed via social networks.
The
highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar –
recently admitted that
the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.
(57) Two
members of the Turkish parliament, high-level
American sources and
others admitted that the Turkish government – a NATO country –
carried out the chemical weapons attacks in Syria and falsely blamed
them on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish
government admitted on
tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian
government.
It’s
gotten so ridiculous that a U.S. Senator has introduced a “Stop
Arming Terrorists Act”,
and U.S. Congresswoman – who introduced a similar bill in the House
– says:
“For years, the U.S. government has been supporting armed militant
groups working directly with and often under the command of terrorist
groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda in their fight to overthrow the Syrian
government.”
Government
officials on both
sides of
the conflict, as well as the snipers who actually pulled the
trigger, all admit that
shots were fired on both sides
– killing both government officials and anti-government protesters
in Ukraine – to create maximum chaos and destabilization.
Speaking
of snipers, in a secret recording, Venezuelan generals admit that
they will deploy snipers to shoot protesters, but keep the marksmen
well-hidden from demonstrator and the reporters covering the events
so others would be blamed for the deaths.
Burmese
government officials admitted that
Burma (renamed Myanmar) used false flag attacks against Muslim and
Buddhist groups within the country to stir up hatred between the two
groups, to prevent democracy from spreading.
Israeli
police were again filmed in
2015 dressing up as Arabs and throwing stones, then turning over
Palestinian protesters to Israeli soldiers.
Britain’s
spy agency has admitted (and see
this)
that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on
targets, framing
people by
writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the
target.
The
CIA has admitted that
it uses viruses and malware from Russia and other countries to carry
out cyberattacks and blame other countries.
U.S.
soldiers have admitted that
if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop”
automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they
were militants.
German
prosecutors admit that
a German soldier disguised himself as a Syrian refugee and planned
to shoot people so that the attack would be blamed on asylum
seekers.
(67)
Police frame innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit. The
practice is so well-known that the New York Times noted in
1981:
In
police jargon, a throwdown is a weapon planted on a victim.
Perez,
himself a former [Los Angeles Police Department] cop, was caught
stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. After
pleading guilty in September, he bargained for a lighter sentence by
telling an appalling story of attempted murder and
a “throwdown”–police
slang for a weapon planted by cops to make a shooting legally
justifiable.
Perez said he and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, shot an unarmed
18th Street Gang member named Javier Ovando, then planted
a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that
Ovando had tried to shoot themduring
a stakeout.
As
part of his plea bargain, Pérez implicated scores of officers from
the Rampart Division’s anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating
gang members, planting
evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked
shootings.
(68)
A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:
Most
terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own
security services.
He
has himself admitted to
carrying out a false flag attack.
The
head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles
office said that
most terror attacks are committed by the CIA and FBI as false flags.
(70)
The Director of
Analytics at the interagency Global Engagement Center housed at the
U.S. Department of State, also an adjunct professor at George Mason
University, where he teaches the graduate course National Security
Challenges in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology,
a former branch chief in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and an
intelligence advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security (J.D.
Maddox) notes:
Provocation
is one of the most basic, but confounding, aspects of
warfare. Despite
its sometimes obvious use, it has succeeded consistently against
audiences around the world, for millennia, to compel war.
A well-constructed provocation narrative mutes even the most vocal
opposition.
***
The
culmination of a strategic provocation operation invariably reflects
a narrative of victimhood: we
are the victims of the enemy’s unforgivable atrocities.
***
In
the case of strategic provocation the
deaths of an aggressor’s own personnel are a core tactic of the
provocation.
***
The
persistent use of strategic provocation over centuries – and its
apparent importance to war planners – begs the question of its
likely use by the US and other states in the near term.
(71)
Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the “benefits” of of
false flags to justify their political agenda:
“Terrorism
is the best political weapon for
nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph
Hitler
“Why
of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the
leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or
a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship
… Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell
them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann
Goering, Nazi leader.
“The
easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry
out acts
of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal
security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin
Postscript
1: It is not just “modern” nations which have launched false flag
attacks. For example, a Native American from one tribe (Pomunkey)
murdered a white Englishwoman living in Virginia in 1697 and then
falsely blamed it on second tribe
(Piscataway). But he later admitted in
court that he was not really Piscataway, and that he had been paid by
a provocateur from a third tribe
(Iroquois) to kill the woman as a way to start a war between the
English and the Piscataway, thus protecting the profitable Iroquois
monopoly in trade with the English.
Postscript
2: On multiple occasions, atrocities or warmongering are falsely
blamed on the enemy as a justification for war … when no
such event ever occurred. This is more like a “fake flag”
than a “false flag”, as no actual terrorism occurred.
For
example:
The
NSA admits that
it lied about
what really happened in the Gulf
of Tonkin incident in
1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese
boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for
the Vietnam war
One
of the central lies used to justify the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq
after Iraq invaded Kuwait was the false
statement by
a young Kuwaiti girl that Iraqis
murdered Kuwaiti babies in
hospitals. Her statement was arranged by a Congressman who knew that
she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S.
– who was desperately trying to lobby the U.S. to enter the war –
but the Congressman hid
that fact from the public and from Congress
Pulitzer
prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reported that
the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document
falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that
the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the
forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And
see this and this
Time
magazine points
out that
the claim by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to buy “yellow
cake” Uranium from Niger:
had
been checked out — and debunked — by U.S. intelligence a year
before the President repeated it.
Everyone
knew that
Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. More
The
“humanitarian” wars in Syria, Libya and Yugoslavia were all
justified by highly exaggerated
reports that
the leaders of those countries were committing atrocities against
their people. And see
this
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* Op WashingtonBlog wordt ook verwezen naar een ander artikel op Newsweek:
