Israeli forces ‘attack Palestinian woman, daughter’ in Silwan
Umm Qalawoon al-Tawil lying unconscious outside her home after Israeli officers attacked her
Ma’an – 01/05/2014
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces attacked a Palestinian woman and her teenage daughter in the Wadi Hilweh quarter south of the Old City of Jerusalem on Thursday, Palestinians in Silwan neighborhood said.
Director of the Silwan-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center Jawad Siyam told Ma’an that Israeli officers broke into the home of Umm Kalawoon al-Tawil and “brutally” beat her and her 15-year-old daughter Layla.
Siyam highlighted that Israeli officers continued to beat al-Tawil while they dragged her out of her apartment to a playground in the neighborhood until she passed out.
Fistfights broke out between local residents and Israeli officers while an ambulance evacuated al-Tawil to al-Maqasid hospital in Jerusalem for treatment.
An Israeli police spokesman said he was unaware of any detentions in the area.
Sweden’s elite more loyal to NATO, the US and EU than to its people
By Jan Oberg | Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research | May 2, 2014
Over the last 25-30 years Sweden’s military, security and foreign policy elite has changed Sweden’s policy 180 degrees.
These fundamental changes were initiated by the Social Democratic government under Goran Persson and foreign minister Anna Lindh and have been carried through virtually without public debate.
The rapproachment with interventionism, militarism and US/NATO in all fields has been planned, incremental, furtive and dishonest; in short, unworthy of a democracy.
This elite is more loyal with Brussels and Washington than with the Swedes.
If your image of Sweden is that it is a progressive, innovative and peace-promoting country with a global mind-set and advocate of international law, it is – sad to say – outdated.
How Sweden has changed
Sweden is no longer neutral and it is only formally non-aligned; there is no closer ally than US/NATO. It has stopped developing policies of its own and basically positions itself in the EU and NATO framework. It no longer produces important new thinking – the last was Olof Palme’s Commission on Common Security (1982).
It has no disarmament ambassador and does not consider the UN important; it does not have a single Swede among the UN Blue Helmets. None of its top-level politicians make themselves available as mediators in international conflicts.
Nuclear abolition is far down the agenda, problematic as a NATO-aspiring country. But one thing has not changed: Sweden remains the world’s largest arms exporter per capita.
Sweden no longer contributes to the protection of smaller states through a a commitment to international law. Its elites wholeheartedly supported the bombing of Serbia/Kosovo. It thought – also under social democratic leadership – that the mass-killing sanctions on Iraq and the occupation were appropriate.
Since Sweden cannot legally export arms to a country in war but upholds a close military technological co-operation with the U.S., its parliament decided to make the US an exception.
Sweden supported the destruction of Libya – participating with its planes there, however only conducting reconnaissance, not bombing, missions.
Sweden did not support the planned war on Syria but also did not voice any audible criticism of the West’s support of only the militant opposition, including Al-Qaeda affiliates.
Carl Bildt
Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt operates mainly as an eminently well-informed international affairs traveler and blogger who doesn’t seem to want to waste too much of his precious time on being a minister. And when he does, he isn’t known for consulting many people around him.
That could be a reason that his comments on various events repeatedly attract laughable media attention. If you compare, as he has, Ukraine’s former President Yanokovich with Norway’s Quisling and thereby make Putin equivalent to Hitler and Russia to Nazi-Germany you no longer operate as a statesman but, rather, as an emotional hothead or a marketing consultant. (Add to that that Bildt recently refused in the Swedish Broadcasting’s ”Saturday Interview” to distance himself from neo-Nazi elements in Kiev).
Bildt’s simplifying, twisted interpretation of Georgia 2008 is revealing of his biased emotionality where earlier – for instance during his position as High Rep in Bosnia – he deserved respect for operating in an intellectually sober manner.
If you don’t have your own thinking and policies, Russophobic platitudes is all you need. And it qualifies for CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Sweden is heading for NATO membership
Here follow a few recent events/news which emphasize further the deplorable path Sweden – its elites rather than its people – have decided to follow.
1. Sweden’s security political elite these years ”considers broader alliances with NATO and the EU” as Defence News recently informed us.
How enigmatic! After having been neutral and non-aligned during tough confrontation and tension in the Cold War years, Sweden now needs to join NATO when there is no single analysis anywhere that makes it likely that Sweden, in the foreseeable future, will be faced with a threat.
While the intelligent security and defence discourse is now about human security, the environment and high-tech challenges, Sweden’s elites talk about defence as weapons only.
This is dangerous ”group think” steered by bureaucratic vested interests and paid for by tax payers who are de facto threatened more by these interests than by Putin. A reality check would lead to a reality chock.
Cruise missiles for “deterrence”
2. Swedish planes shall now, in the light of a conveniently hysteric interpretation of the crisis in Ukraine, equip its planes with cruise missiles. (Defense News)
Incredibly, decisions like this are taken with the intellectually sloppy mantra that it adds to the country’s ‘deterrence’ capacity.
The security priesthood of the country consists of some researchers of military affairs at huge, well-financed state institutes in close contact with politicians and the military to whom military-loyal journalists have close bonds. Everybody, follow the party line! Saty in the box! Don’t challenge the domain assumptions!
Sweden now jumps on a sinking ship
The country that once did something for a better world, has joined the militarist world. In a time when both NATO and the US is getting weaker, Sweden’s elite foolishly plans to put all Sweden’s eggs there.
It has no policy vis-a-vis, say, the BRICS countries or any vision of the world in 20 years to navigate towards. It has no ideals, values or commitments, only a ”follow-the-US/NATO and EU” flock mentality.
The US Ambassador is invited to blackmail
3. The US ambassador to Sweden, Mark Brzezinski, recently told Sweden to join NATO, otherwise it won’t get any help in the event of an attack – in short, Mafiosi blackmailing disguised as deep concern and generous offer to bring (conditional, however) help. This was revealed by the conservative Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet, Google translation here.
How many – and which – ambassador’s are given the opportunity to speak directly to all parties of the Swedish parliament?
The message is pure blackmail – and based on fearology – because everybody knows that should Russia attack anyone, Sweden would not be the first target and it would be in the interest of NATO to control Swedish territory before any spreading of Russian forces from somewhere else to the Nordic area.
In short, NATO’s interests in Sweden are much larger than Sweden’s in NATO. Whatever one may think of these fantasies, they are just that: No one has thought up a credible scenario for how Sweden would be invaded by Russia and remain defenceless.
If one of largest militaries per capita can’t defend its people there is something wrong with it
But this is the military-fundamentalist propaganda the Swedes are the target of these years: We must join NATO because we have such a weak defence that we can’t defend ourselves!
The liberal party’s defence spokesman, Allan Widman, recently stated this in a manner indicative of the low intellectual level of defence discussions here: ”I can only state the fact that Russia is about 140 million people and Sweden is 9 million. We won’t be able to manage serious challenges from outside on our own…”
Now if the Swedish military can’t provide any protection of the 9 million Swedes with a budget of 8 billion dollars (among the 10% highest per capita in the world) at its disposal, it’s time to ask how inefficient and cost-maximising it can be without its leadership being fired.
4. Just this week it was decided that AWACS planes can pass through Swedish airspace in connection with its Ukraine crisis missions.
5. Sweden (and Finland) is discussing how to receive military aid, including troops, from NATO (see Dagens Nyheter April 27, 2014). This goes beyond what NATO members Denmark, Norway and Iceland have ever accepted. And Sweden is not a NATO member! (You may see a petition against this here)
It’s time to begin to think
Take the money, prestige, privileges and funds from the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complexes – MIMAC – of the world – and in Sweden too – and force them to think:
• Think for the common good and not for their vested interests.
• Think for the world and not for their parochial psycho-political nationalism.
• Think of the people’s human security and make violence-prevention the top goal.
• Think first of non-violent policies and use militry as the last resort in accordance with the UN Charter.
• Think as you should in a democracy, with the people, for the people and by the people.
As long as all you have on your shelves is fighter planes, the world’s problems will be seen as bombing missions.
And that’s when peace, co-operation and mutual understanding is dropped and cold – even warm – wars become ”realistic”. This must not be Sweden’s future.
Contact:
Dr. Jan Oberg, TFF director
0046 738 525200
Stopping Cleveland’s Corporate Freeloaders
By Ralph Nader | May 1, 2014
On May 6th, Cleveland taxpayers will go to the polls to vote on Issue 7. A no vote will prevent an increase in taxpayer money to the already subsidized, big league sports arenas. A yes vote will reaffirm taxpayer servitude to arrogant corporatists and their cruel, twisted mistreatment of that struggling city.
When I was growing up, tax dollars for public works were used for serious public services. Taxpayers paid to build schools, highways, bridges, libraries, health clinics, public transit and other community needs. Tax dollars were not given over to the mega-rich’s profitable athletic playpens. To even suggest tax money for private major league baseball parks would get you laughed or ridiculed out of town.
Now, there are football, baseball and basketball facilities for the NFL, MLB and NBA leagues (plus other professional sports) that are built and renovated using taxpayer dollars often without majority public support. That is why the sports giants try to avoid referenda and, often with campaign contributions, focus instead on persuading Mayors and Governors.
When big league sports mavens cannot avoid a public vote, they mislead the public with claims that building sports venues is a cost-effective way to produce jobs, but most economists know that building sports facilities is definitely not a cost-effective way to create jobs. Visit League of Fans for more information. And, when empty promises fail, the sports kings threaten to move their teams to another town.
When all that fails, the sports barons go for sin taxes and other micro-targeted tabs (such as parking tax, admissions tax, bed tax, video game tax, rental car tax, and property tax exemption), in addition to keeping high prices for tickets, food and parking to begin with.
This is the situation in Cleveland – a deindustrialized, unfairly poor metropolis, with the largest employer now being the Cleveland Clinic. The more affluent people can go to see the Cleveland Browns, the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Cavaliers – whose facilities are named for companies instead of being called “Taxpayers Stadium, Arena and Field.”
The super-rich sports owners, or corporate welfare kings, know “sin taxes” help get more votes for their stadiums. Issue 7 is linked to a 20-year sin tax on alcohol and cigarettes which will be paid by Cuyahoga County residents, totaling between $250 to $350 million. The money will go to “constructing, renovating, improving, or repairing spectator sports facilities.” You can be sure the money will not be going to neighborhood sports programs or playgrounds, otherwise known as participatory sports.
The proposed taxes exclude adjoining counties where fifty percent or more of the paying fans live. Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, already has higher sales and school property taxes than the adjoining counties. Unemployment, prices of necessities and inequality have sky-rocketed in beleaguered Cuyahoga County according to Roldo Bartimole, arguably Cleveland’s greatest investigative reporter of the past half century (see the Cleveland Leader for more information). Any increased taxes – sin or otherwise – should be devoted to the necessities of the local community, not for entertainment.
Big-time sports bosses know that the trump card that enables them to continue with their freeloading ways as crony capitalists is to exploit the spectator joy that comes from being part of a local fan base. The subtext of these demands takes away that joy from those TV watching fans by relocating to another city willing to give away the store. It all reeks of greed, power and extortion.
Rest assured Clevelanders, the Browns, Indians and Cavaliers are going nowhere. They know how much of the “store” (over $1 billion since 1990) your politicians have already given them. The sports bosses like to call themselves capitalists. So let them behave like capitalists and invest their own money and no longer dare to turn your tax dollars into their profits.
The Coalition Against the Sin Tax (CAST) wants full disclosure of the secret “obligations” imposed on the public in these existing corporate welfare contracts so that residents can know what’s going on with their pocketbooks (see the Coalition Against the Sin Tax for more information).
“Who us worry?” non-Clevelanders might be saying. Better think again. The greedy sports billionaires are all over the country. They never stop expanding their mounting wealth at other people’s expense. Until you stop them.
Russian sanctions, NSA spying top the agenda at Merkel’s White House visit
RT | May 02, 2014
Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is in the White House for the first time since it was revealed the NSA monitored her personal communications. During bilateral talks with Barack Obama, Merkel is expected to broach sanctions on Russia and US spying.
Relations between Washington and Berlin are showing signs of tensions, as German companies call for a halt to sanctions on Russia. Furthermore, Germany is still reeling from the NSA spy revelations that affected millions of German citizens, as well as high-ranking businessmen and politicians.
Merkel reiterated earlier this week that Germany would support any further financial sanctions against Russia. However, growing calls from the German business sector may force her to change her policy in Friday’s meeting.
“The Germans are very clear they are not going to pursue factions that hurt German industry. That would be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Michael Hudson professor of Economics at the University of Missouri to RT.
Indeed, some major corporate figures have already spoken out against a potential escalation of the sanctions, maintaining they will do more harm than good to the German economy.
“If there’s a single message we have as business leaders, then it’s this: sit down at the negotiating table and resolve these matters peacefully,” Eckhard Cordes told a recent conference in Berlin. Cordes is a former Daimler AG executive who now heads the Ostauschuss, German industry’s branch for Eastern Europe, reported the Wall Street Journal.
So far the US, EU, Canada and Japan have imposed sanction on Russia for its alleged role in the unrest in eastern Ukraine. Moscow has denied claims it is involved in the unrest and has pointed the finger at Washington for orchestrating the situation in Ukraine as part of its geopolitical strategy in the region.
NSA spying
The espionage antics of the US National Security Agency remain a bone of contention between Berlin and Washington. It emerged earlier in April that Merkel had been denied access to her NSA file, following reports the agency had monitored her personal communications. The revelations had a profound effect on German society, prompting calls for Washington to account for its actions.
“First the US denied spying on Merkel’s cell phone, then admitted it, now it just continues, because Obama says ‘we reserve the right to collect information.’ I just see Angela Merkel going to the US to pick up new instructions,” Ken Jebson, Redaktion radio host told RT’s Peter Oliver.
While WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafsson, said the German government’s lack of resolve over the NSA spy scandal is indicative of European cowardice in the face of US dominance.
“I think the proof of the cowardice of governments and politicians and their unwillingness to tackle this in a meaningful way, despite what they say publicly, was when European countries closed their airspace and forced the presidential plane of Evo Morales to land in Austria, on a hunch that Edward Snowden was on board,” he told RT.
Earlier this year Washington pledged that it would no longer spy on world leaders, but stated it would still gather information on the intentions of foreign powers through its espionage programs.
Gerry Adams’ arrest politics of the dead
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | May 1, 2014
There seems little doubt that the arrest of Irish republican leader Gerry Adams this week over alleged involvement in a tragic murder 44 years ago is politically motivated.
The political interests pushing this agenda have no respect for victims of Ireland’s recent 30-year conflict. These interests are being selective in their focus on victims, cynically vying for political gain, and in particular to damage the rise of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party.
Later this month, Ireland is heading into European Parliamentary elections, which up to now was promising to see major electoral gains for Sinn Fein, the party of which Adams has been president of since 1983.
In recent years, Sinn Fein has emerged has the fastest growing political party in both the British-occupied north and the independent southern state. It has become the second biggest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, while in the southern legislative chamber, Dail Eireann, Sinn Fein has seen its number of parliamentarians expand three-fold over the past three elections to become an increasingly pivotal force there.
Sinn Fein can rightly claim to be the only all-Ireland party with representatives and organizational structure that transcend the British-imposed border, which partitions the island into northern and southern jurisdictions. Sinn Fein is distinguished from all other political parties by its manifesto calling for a united, independent country.
That manifesto not only threatens the British interest of maintaining its political presence in the North of Ireland; the so-called Irish political parties in the South of Ireland also see their establishment interests challenged by the growing popular support for Sinn Fein and its calls to shake-up the stagnant status quo on both sides of the border.
This is the important context in which the Sinn Fein leader was taken into custody this week by police in Northern Ireland. Adams has not been charged but his arrest over the murder took many observers by surprise, coming seemingly out of the blue. The allegations will revive memories of a dark episode in Ireland’s 30-year conflict.
The murder in question is that of a Belfast woman, Jean McConville, who was abducted and killed by the Provisional IRA in 1972. McConville was a widow and mother of 10 children, aged 38 when she died. The IRA claimed that the woman was an informer to the British army during the conflict that saw Belfast plunged into chaos and violence for nearly three decades. The McConville family always vehemently denied their mother was an informer, and a police investigation conducted years later cleared the deceased woman of any such activity.
Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA, and Gerry Adams has long been alleged to be a senior member of the guerrilla organization, which laid down its arms as part of the Irish peace settlement signed in 1998. As an alleged commander of the IRA during the 1970s in Belfast, Adams is accused of overseeing the assassination of Jean McConville.
The Sinn Fein president denies any involvement in the abduction and murder. This week, before his arrest, Adams described the allegations as “malicious” and aimed at damaging his party politically, especially on the eve of European-wide elections.
Certainly, the accusations against Adams are not new. In recent years, two former senior IRA members, Brendan Hughes and Dolores Price, made separate claims that Adams ordered the execution of Jean McConville. Female IRA member Dolores Price said before her own death last year that she abducted McConville on direct orders from Adams and drove the mother to the place of her execution.
McConville’s body was found in August 2003, nearly 31 years after her murder. Her remains had been buried on a beach in Shelling Hill, County Louth, across the border in the South of Ireland. The IRA had already admitted to the murder in 1999, while still maintaining that McConville was an informer. It offered an apology to the family and provided information to locate her burial site.
The grief of the McConville family is surely poignant. Ten young children were left without a mother and the family was subsequently split up and taken into social care.
But there are thousands of other such family tragedies during the conflict that engulfed Northern Ireland between 1968-1998. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters were shot dead by British army soldiers and pro-British paramilitaries who were directed by London’s military intelligence to instil terror in the civilian population and to deter its right to Irish freedom. Thousands of lives were ruined and traumatized by a conflict that the British government bears a heavy responsibility for but for which it has always evaded.
The southern Irish political establishment has a lot to answer for too. It largely turned its back on the plight of many citizens in the north when they were being subjected to ruthless British militarism.
Indeed, the southern Irish ruling class collaborated with Britain to suppress the freedom movement that re-emerged in the British-occupied northern state during the 1960s.
Today, the South of Ireland jurisdiction – which pompously and fraudulently refers to itself as “the Republic of Ireland” – is the apotheosis of the Irish republic that generations of Irish people have fought and died for.
It is a bankrupt state of huge social inequality and poverty, overseen by crony political parties who made their peace with British imperialism when the island was partitioned in 1920 – thus betraying the cause of Irish republicanism that sought to set up a unified, independent state free from British domination.
Sinn Fein, the original party that led Irish independence more than a century ago, is again in the ascendancy, both north and south. It is this political threat that most probably explains the sudden rekindling of interest in the tragic murder of Jean McConville more four decades ago. The place where her remains were found 10 years ago, County Louth, is the electoral constituency that Gerry Adams represents today in the southern parliament, having been elected to the seat in 2011.
Jean McConville’s family deserve the truth and justice. So do thousands of other Irish families. But for these other families, the British and Dublin governments and their lickspittle media show little interest towards. Both the London and Dublin governments continue to refuse the setting up an independent truth commission into all conflict-related deaths. The selective focus on one victim strongly suggests manipulation of a single family’s grief for cynical political purposes. That’s not justice. It’s grubby politicking.
Time to End Military/CIA Torture Once and For All
By Steven Reisner | CounterPunch | April 30, 2014
In the face of continued revelations of United States’ torture policies during the Bush administration, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), today sent letters to President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanding an end to all ongoing practices of torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees. The letter specifically calls for revoking techniques permitted in Appendix ‘M’ of the current Army Field Manual, such as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, forms of sensory deprivation, and environmental manipulations, which individually and combined have been condemned internationally as forms of torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, and therefore violate the United States’ obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. In addition, PsySR expressed particularly concern that health professionals, including psychologists, have been engaged to support such efforts in violation of their ethical responsibilities.
Here is the letter:
April 29, 2014
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
As an organization of health professionals dedicated to human rights advocacy, Psychologists for Social Responsibility strongly objects to practices that violate the ethics of health professions and lie outside the norms of international law and practice. The recent Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirms that, beginning during the Bush Administration, interrogation and detention practices were put in place by the CIA that constituted torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Practices once condemned under law and international treaty were soon redefined by the Justice Department to permit a “culture of torture” to proliferate under U.S. policy. These practices quickly spread to the detention centers of the Department of Defense and throughout the theaters of war. While legal progress has been made to limit these policies and practices, significant remnants remain under your authority. We write to you today to urge you to eliminate all existing procedures allowing for torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees.
In 2009, via Executive Order 13491, your administration officially announced its intention to end the torture practices developed and instituted under the Bush Administration. Interrogation practices that did not conform to the Army Field Manual were abolished. However, as documented by numerous legal and human rights groups, as well as by former interrogators,[1] the Army Field Manual still includes abusive techniques in violation of these standards.
We concur with the recent recommendation of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP)/Open Society Foundations report [2] calling for you to issue a new executive order banning interrogation techniques using isolation, sleep deprivation, exploitation of fear, and other methods that violate international standards regarding torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. We, too, urge you to remediate the ethical standards of the Army Field Manual via executive order.
The current edition of the Army Field Manual (2006) officially supports interrogations using “approach techniques,” including the creation, manipulation, and intensification of phobias and fears in prisoners (“Fear Up”) and the calculated psychological attack against ego or self-esteem (“Emotional Pride and Ego Down”). The “Emotional Futility” approach intends to create a perception in a prisoner that “resistance to questioning is futile.” The manual describes the purpose of this technique as engendering “a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness” in a detainee and notes the “potential for application of the pride and ego approach to cross the line into humiliating and degrading treatment of the detainee.”
Also problematic on both basic health and human rights grounds is Appendix M, added to this most recent version of the Army Field Manual (2-22.3). This special annex proposes a technique known as “Separation,” which includes the use of solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, forms of sensory deprivation, and environmental manipulations — all of which could theoretically be extended indefinitely — as ostensibly legitimate forms of treatment on “unlawful combatants.” The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture [3] and independent human rights organizations describe such practices as torture and/or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. As health professionals and human rights advocates, we are disturbed that such techniques are conducted under an official capacity and by executive order.
We are particularly concerned that health professionals, including psychologists, have been engaged to support such efforts, directly or indirectly, in violation of their ethical obligations and in violation of the policies of their professional associations.
As you must be aware, these practices are not only cruel, but also yield questionable intelligence and contribute to a perception of our country as a systematic violator of human rights. It would serve as a strong and principled legacy of your Administration if these remaining practices of torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment were finally and definitively ended.
We look forward to your timely response.
Sincerely,
Steven Reisner, PhD
President
Psychologists for Social Responsibility
cc: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
Steven Reisner is President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (www.psysr.org) and is a founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (www.ethicalpsychology.org).
Notes.
[1] Scott Horton, “Interrogators C click here//harpers.org/blog/2010/11/interrogators-call-for-the-elimination-of-appendix-m/
[2] Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detai nee” target=”_blank”>Abuse in the “War on T/a>error”, IMAP/OSF Task Force Report, Nov. 2013. URL: http://www.imapny.org/File Library/Documents/IMAP-EthicsTextFinal2.pdf
[3] ”Solitary confinement should be banned in most ca ses,” target=”_blank”> UN expert says,” UN News C” target=”_bnk”>k”> UN expert says” target=”_blank”>nk”>k”> UN ex” target=lank”>lank”>nk”>” target=”_blank”> k”> UN expert says,” UN News Centre, Oct. 18th, 2011. URL: https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40097
SUSTAINED AND ABSOLUTE INCOMPETENCE
Da Russophile | May 1, 2014
Monday 21st: front page story on NYT “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia”, ah hah! proof at last!; a bit of doubt surfaces on Wednesday; entire story trashed Thursday: “Aftermath of Ukraine Photo Story Shows Need for More Caution”. When I was a kid, CIA confections lasted a lot longer than a couple of days. So, into the bin along with the Jewish registration letter, captured “OSCE observers” and soon to be followed by the new intercepts. All I see from Washington is desperation piled on incompetence: none of this has turned out the way it was supposed to and no one has any idea of what to do next. So turn the volume up, desperately clutch at any story, hysterically accuse RT of propaganda when all it’s doing is accurately quoting you, announce more sanctions based on the dopey assumption that Putin has billions stashed in the West and move military forces to irrelevant places like Poland or Romania. The Micawber school of diplomacy.
- “Containment” is the new mantra for dealing with Russia in Washington these days. But has anyone there read the original? (Original telegram, subsequent article). Apart from the fact that George Kennan was strongly against NATO expansion, which is one of the two Original Sins of today’s Ukrainian catastrophe, the conditions Kennan saw in 1946 simply do not apply today. In essence Kennan was arguing that the inner constructions and logical implications of the Marxist-Leninist ideology did not correspond well with reality and therefore, over the long haul, it would not survive. Assuming that the USA would survive because it was better connected to reality, he expected the USA to outlast the USSR, given patience and prudence. This proved correct over the next half-century. Who believes this to be the case today other than the few crazies who still think Marxism-Leninism rules in Russia? And, speaking of perception of reality, one might compare any statement by Lavrov with Slaughter’s article below or any bloviation from Kerry. Or, thinking long-term as Kennan did, who can be confident that the USA will be Number One in 50 years? Or 25? Or even 10? They say China is about to become the premier economy this year. Deng’s reforms began only 35 years ago… What will the world look like in another 35?
- To give you an idea of the level of impassioned lunacy in Washington these days, read “Stopping Russia Starts in Syria”. Essentially the argument is that Obama should bomb Syria in order to show Putin he is serious about using force. Or something. “Striking Syria might not end the civil war there, but it could prevent the eruption of a new one in Ukraine”. Gibbering nonsense, eh? And incoherently erected on idiotic assumptions. But the author is not some bizarro from the outer fringes of the Net; it is Anne-Marie Slaughter, academic and quondam director of policy planning in the US State Department and now President of the New America Foundation. Mainstream madness.
KIEV’S WEAKNESS
Another US official visits, another “anti-terrorist operation”, another fizzle. This piece (rather poorly translated) gives a clue why. We have already seen in previous events that what remains of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are unwilling to get involved – even the supposedly elite airborne forces handed over their weapons rather than shoot. The so-called special forces are no better. The local police sympathise with the rebels. Now we see the ineffectiveness of the new “National Guard” made up of western Ukrainian nationalists: not even they, under-equipped, unfed and unpaid, are willing or competent. Kiev simply hasn’t got anyone to do its will no matter how much Biden and Brennan might prod it. And a couple of nights ago a riot between two different flavours of super-nationalists in Kiev itself. “Ukraine” no longer exists; Washington and Brussels have broken it in half.
NAVY
Russia has handed over to Ukraine 13 of the 70 Ukrainian Navy warships it acquired when their crews switched sides.
CONSEQUENCES
Debka (which I regard as not always wrong) claims Putin has approved the sale of the S-400 SAM system to China. Said to be pretty advanced; here’s some marketing porn for it. And other signs of closeness: big investment, naval exercise. The first fruits of the many unintended consequences of Victoria Nuland’s grand scheme.
© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada (http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/ http://us-russia.org/)
Movement Against European Union Takes Shape in Greece
Prensa Latina | May 1, 2014
Athens – Three political groups, faced with the coming European elections, presented in this capital a coordination communique today, in which they expressed their rejection of the European Union (EU) and the euro.
The French People’s Republican Union, the Finnish Independence Party and the Greek People’s Unitary Front announced their support for participation in the European call to elections in May.
In their proposal, they are demanding emancipation of the continent’s countries from the EU, an anti-democratic organization at the service of the financial and economic oligarchy, the interests of which are clearly against the interests of the citizens of the continent.
These parties are trying “to warn electors about what is at stake in the current European structure,” spreading the message that “to reestablish democracy in our respective countries, it is unavoidably necessary to oust the EU and the euro.”
US-run ‘Cuban Twitter’ categorized ‘political tendencies’ of users – report
RT | May 1, 2014
Contractors working for the United States who ran the so-called ‘Cuban Twitter’ social media project categorized user responses to overtly political messages for “receptiveness” and “political tendencies,” among other details, according to a new report.
The US State Department’s Agency for the International Development (USAID) employed contractors to foster political unrest – while avoiding Cuba’s internet restrictions – through the subscription-based text-messaging service ZunZuneo, AP reported earlier this month.
Documents obtained by AP said ZunZuneo was designed to start with fairly benign messaging. Once it was more widespread among the Cuban population, it would introduce political content that would attempt to inspire Cubans to “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”
Despite the State Department’s assertions that the program was not used to influence political leanings, AP reported Wednesday that cell phone users were categorized in databases as being “pro-revolution,” “apolitical,” or “anti-revolutionary.”
One young contractor working on the project was Paula Cambronero, whose first job out of college was working on how Cubans interacted with ZunZuneo messages carefully – and quietly – sent from Spanish phone numbers. The contractor asked Cambronero to communicate with staff over encrypted channels, and emails were sent from a domain name “not publicly linked” to the contractor.
Her employer – not named by AP – told her that she would be dealing with a “considerable amount of sensitive information that must be safeguarded to protect critical operations of the Project.” USAID even established a dummy company in the Cayman Islands to cover any money trail associated with ZunZuneo.
Cambronero’s responsibility was to build a database of unsuspecting Cuban cell phone users that responded to ZunZuneo messages, using classifications like gender, age, location, “receptiveness,” and “political tendencies.” She would analyze how users reacted to overtly political messages written by a hired Cuban satirist that poked at the nation’s leaders.
Cambronero did not respond to AP’s request for comment. The State Department had no comment to AP on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, USAID spokesman Matthew Herrick told AP that the agency had reviewed the project and offered congressional investigators the selection of messages sent to Cubans.
Herrick claimed the 249 different messages focused on sports, technology, world news, and trivia, and that the messages “were consistent with the objective of creating a platform for Cubans to speak freely among themselves.”
The political messages crafted by the satirist were sent “under a grant that pre-dated the ZunZuneo project,” Herrick said.
Yet documents reviewed by AP show that USAID considered the grant a “test phase” of the network that would become ZunZuneo.
Overall, Cambronero collected more than 700 responses to text messages, analyzing them by two variables: the level of interest in the received messages and the political content of a response.
She found that 68 percent of responses exhibited mild interest in the ZunZuneo texts. Many responses – 210 total – wanted to know who was sending the anonymous message.
“Explain your point better because I don’t understand and remember that if you haven’t done anything you shouldn’t fear anything, at least tell me your name if you’re not a coward,” said one respondent.
Others asked for help in obtaining birth certificates of Spanish ancestors, a prerequisite for acquiring a Spanish passport to leave Cuba.
Only 59 responses were analyzed for political content. Cambronero found 10 that did have “political character,” AP reported, “of which two were counter-revolutionary.”
In her notes, Cambronero recommended that “messages with a humorous connotation should not contain a strong political tendency, so as not to create animosity in the recipients.”
Upon the ZunZuneo revelations, the Obama administration quickly came under attack and promptly denounced allegations that it covertly plotted to disrupt Cuban politics.
Condemnation of the program continues to emerge. In Costa Rica, where ZunZuneo was reportedly developed by American officials, the nation’s foreign minister Enrique Castillo said last week that not only does he think it was “inappropriate” for the US to use his country to conduct the project, but that he previously warned officials not to involve his Central American country in the endeavor due to fears it would strain Costa Rica’s own relationship with Cuba.
“I think it’s inappropriate to use an embassy in Costa Rica for this type of operation that harms a third country,” Castillo told the AP. “We’re not filing a complaint. The point is that embassies accredited in Costa Rica don’t have to submit their plans or programs for the Costa Rican government’s approval.”
Costa Rica’s minister of communications, Carlos Roverssi, said Wednesday that it will fall on the country’s recently elected government to deal with the matter from here on out.
“It seems to me that the issue is now public and the next government should follow up on the issue, without a doubt,” he said.
The US State Department has begun a review of the program, saying it would be “troubling” if ZunZuneo involved political messaging.
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From the Archives
Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia
By James Petras :: 03.20.2018
Introduction: For the greater part of a decade the US, the UK and the EU have been carrying out a campaign to undermine and overthrow the Russia government and in particular to oust President Putin. Fundamental issues are at stake including the real possibility of a nuclear war.
The most recent western propaganda campaign and one of the most virulent is the charge launched by the UK regime of Prime Minister Theresa May. The Brits have claimed that Russian secret agents conspired to poison a former Russian double-agent and his daughter in England, threatening the sovereignty and safety of the British people. No evidence has ever been presented. Instead the UK expelled Russian diplomats and demands harsher sanctions, to increase tensions. The UK and its US and EU patrons are moving toward a break in relations and a military build-up.
A number of fundamental questions arise regarding the origins and growing intensity of this anti-Russian animus.
Why do the Western regimes now feel Russia is a greater threat then in the past? Do they believe Russia is more vulnerable to Western threats or attacks? Why do the Western military leaders seek to undermine Russia’s defenses? Do the US economic elites believe it is possible to provoke an economic crisis and the demise of President Putin’s government? What is the strategic goal of Western policymakers? Why has the UK regime taken the lead in the anti-Russian crusade via the fake toxin accusations at this time?
This paper is directed at providing key elements to address these questions. … continue
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