Guardian Watch: Insults fly in post-Brexit hysteria
OffGuardian | June 25, 2016
The world is still reeling from the referendum results – there is uncertainty in the air, real uncertainty, a rare creature in the modern era of controlled media consensus and carefully directed narrative. Again and again the thoughts are echoed: nobody expected this to happen. David Cameron was positive his side had won. Oliver Imhof wrote an article threatening to leave “Brexit Britain”, comfortable in the knowledge that “at no point did I think it could really happen.” You get the impression even Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage never expected to win.
Nobody expected this to happen – Least of all The Guardian… and the reactions? They have been hysterical, in every sense of the word.
The sheer volume of opinion is evidence of an institutional panic. Polly Toynbee’s reaction, always the paragon of understatement:
Catastrophe. Britain has broken apart. An uprising of resentment by the left-behind has torn us in two, a country wrecked by a yawning class divide stretched wider by recession and austerity.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the referendum had been for turning off the sun, banning talking, or killing the first born son of every family in Britain…rather than a return to a state of affairs that has existed for all but the last 40 years of human history. Such is the level of the destruction.
The Climate is ruined. The FTSE 100 plummeted to levels not seen since last Thursday. The pound is now worth 7 cents less than it was last week. British science is already nearly destroyed. The arts world will regress, and collapse. British stocks crashed… less than half as much as European stocks. The FTSE 100 actually ended the week on a small gain… but ARRGHH! Panic!
But of course, the (as yet totally underwhelming and mostly imaginary) financial costs are nothing compared to the spiritual, moral costs.
“We woke up in a different country”, says Jonathan Freedland, absolutely shocked that 52% of the country should “reject authority” after only a generation or so of being exploited, lied to and suffering a general decline in living standards.
Who knows, perhaps the worst effects can be avoided altogether. But we should not be under any illusions. This is not the country it was yesterday. That place has gone for ever.
An assertion that would, perhaps, be greeted with more than a few smiles in many of the places we have recently bombed in the name of protecting “European values”.
I was not aware, until yesterday morning, that more than half of the people of Britain were racists. For all of Britain’s various social problems, I have never observed much in the way of strong racism. Far-right parties like the BNP get almost no traction in elections. There aren’t neo-Nazi marches in London that compare to the ones in Lviv or Berlin.
Nevertheless…apparently,we are now totally controlled by xenophobia. The country is now cruel and racist. Joseph Harker’s column declares:
… in the wake of the EU referendum people across the UK are fearful of the intolerance that has been unleashed…
Bear in mind this piece was published at 1.37pm yesterday afternoon, literally less than 12 hours after the result was announced. We’ll do Joseph some credit and assume he spent more than forty minutes writing this up – let’s say he started writing at exactly noon. That gives him eight hours to survey these “people across the UK” who, one can only assume, were merely the people on his bus route that morning. He “understands” that the vote wasn’t about race, that people want economic control of their country back… but actually it WAS about race, and we’re all racists.
The initial, panic-stricken, meltdown could not last of course. What quickly became more important was BLAME. And you know who the Guardian, a notionally liberal and inclusive paper, have chosen to blame? The old, the poor, the uneducated… oh, and Jeremy Corbyn of course. Who, I suppose, some would argue is all three.
Pretty soon after the results were announced, YouGov released their pretty graphs demonstrating that Leave won because old, stupid, poor people voted for them. I am unclear how exactly the YouGov figures were collated, but given that right up to the wire YouGov were predicting Remain would win, I see no reason to trust any of their information. In fact they predicted a 52-48 result for staying the EU… so as far as we know all of their figures are totally ass-backwards.
But let’s put that aside – let us generously assume that YouGov have even the faintest notion of what they are talking about. Do we demand a revote because the wrong people won? Is this how democracy works? According to Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, the most forgettable of the Graun’s feminist-clickbait typing pool, yes. Yes it is.
If you’re young and angry about the EU referendum, you’re right to be”
… declares her headline. It is just one article, of many that have appeared all over the media, citing the reported age demographics of the two voting camps. Claiming that “old people” have ruined the futures of the young… because they are old and stupid and racist.
The general inversion in western society, compared to other global societies, where we prize youth and inexperience over the merits of elder wisdom, is an ongoing problem. A bigger discussion for a different time. Talking only in the specific – only about this vote – this is still a ridiculous and insulting position to take up.
The “old people” being discussed would have been young in the 1960s and 70s. They would be old hippies and baby-boomers. The idea of “grandma being a bit racist in and old-fashioned way”, does not work when today’s grandmas were listening to the Beatles and marching against Vietnam. These “old people” are the generation that voted FOR the EU last time, and now have 40+ years of experience of living with their decision. Do we do them credit, and assume they have changed their minds based on their life experience? Should we respect that 40 years of living and working in this country means people have EARNED their right to be heard? No, we are encouraged to dismiss them and insult their motives.
Young people, and I speak as one myself, tend to think selfishly. Teenagers are, for the most part, egomaniacal monsters – certain of their own brilliance, positive they are thinking original thoughts, and dismissive of authority and experience. It’s a phase, you grow out of it. Slowly. The young people complaining about old voters, and the authors encouraging and enabling this attitude, are assuming that older voters, likewise, think first of themselves. This is an insult, voters in their 60s and 70s would more likely be voting for the future of their children and grandchildren. To ignore that facet of their vote is unfair and immoral.
Of course, even if they were voting selfishly… so what? Everyone has that right.
It does not matter – the narrative is now set. The vote wasn’t fair, because the wrong people voted. That will be the battle cry.
In hedging their bets, should Leave win, the Guardian took up an odd position pre-referendum. Its editorial line became that, perhaps, voting isn’t that democratic. First there was David Mitchell (sensible shirt and neat beard, every inch the Guardianista caricature) arguing that Parliament should decide this issue, not us, because we are too stupid and underqualified. Then there was NatNug, always a source of prime neo-liberal insanity, declaring that “the mob” had too much influence, and that democracy should be about our “elite institutions” telling us what to do. Yes, seriously.
In keeping with this theme, a fresh column disparages the very idea of referenda:
After what we have experienced in the past month, we need political reform more than ever. But the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.
To back up his opinion he cites the European Council on Foreign Relations, a pan-European “think-tank” staffed by Blairites and funded by George Soros, who say that there are too many referenda and it isn’t fair.
No one expected this to happen, and they will go out of their way to make sure it never happens again.
Brexit Shatters EU and Its Washington Bond
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.06.2016
The British rejection of European Union membership came like a brick slamming into a pane of glass. The impact has stunned observers, radiated shockwaves and suddenly thrown up an arresting vista of cracks and jagged shards.
A crestfallen British Prime Minister David Cameron handed in his resignation only hours after the result showing the majority of Britons had voted for their nation to leave the EU – after 43 years of membership.
The victory for the «Leave» campaign was decisive. Some 52 per cent of British citizens voted against 48 per cent who wanted to «Remain» within the 28-nation bloc. Conservative Party premier Cameron and the leaders of the other main political parties – Labour, Scottish Nationalists, Liberal Democrats – had joined ranks to campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.
But in the end the popular vote rejected their pleas and instead backed the anti-EU stance of Boris Johnston, the former mayor of London who led Conservatives opposed to membership, in league with the more stridently Eurosceptic and anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage. The flamboyant Johnson is now tipped to take over as leader of the Conservatives and maybe future prime minister.
The repercussions of the so-called Brexit are multifaceted. British and international reactions struggled to assimilate the ramifications. This is partly due to a sense of astonishment that the United Kingdom had actually voted to leave. Not only did the result defy all the main political parties, it also repudiated a massive campaign endorsing continued EU membership, with what Leave campaigners decried as a «project of fear».
Cameron’s government had issued dire warnings of economic and financial mayhem if the country opted out of the EU. That call was backed by top British companies, City of London financial executives, and an array of international institutions, including the IMF and OECD. Days before the referendum was held, billionaire financial speculator George Soros predicted disaster for the British economy in the event of a Brexit.
European governments openly urged a Remain vote, while American President Barack Obama said that Britain would no longer be given «special rights» as a trading partner if it left the EU.
In the same week of the referendum, the US-led NATO military alliance also weighed in with grave warnings of increased security risks for Britain if it quit the European bloc.
In spite of this wall of pressure, if not blatant intimidation, the British electorate rejected EU membership. And in the early media coverage of the result, there was a palpable sense of disbelief among the chattering classes that the ordinary British people had gone their own way.
Apart from Cameron tendering his resignation, other British constitutional cracks split wide open on news of the Brexit.
The Leave result was driven mainly by English and Welsh voters, in contrast to Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, where a majority had voted to remain within the EU, the nationalist dominated regional assembly led by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed that a second independence referendum was now on the table. In the previous independence plebiscite, in September 2014, the Scots voted then to stay within the United Kingdom largely as a way of securing continued EU membership by remaining an integral part of the UK. And with most Scots wanting to remain within the EU, the likelihood is that they would now reject the union with a «Brexited» England.
Similarly, in Northern Ireland the EU Remain vote carried the day. Nationalist Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said that London had hence lost its mandate to rule Northern Ireland, and he called for a referendum on Irish unity, which could lead to Britain relinquishing its centuries-old jurisdiction on the island of Ireland.
In short, the Brexit vote has not only severed Britain’s union with the rest of Europe, it has also unleashed secessionist forces presaging the dissolution of the United Kingdom’s own internal union.
Across Europe, the stunning British vote to leave was met with euphoric applause from similar anti-EU movements. In France, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen hailed the result as a «blow for freedom» and she demanded that the French nation be immediately given the right to have a referendum on EU membership.
Le Pen’s declaration for an EU referendum was echoed in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
Several recent polls in these countries have shown growing – if not majority – support for a similar Brexit-style rejection of the EU. That is certainly alarming for the incumbent governments given that these countries represent founding members of the European project, which began nearly 70 years ago following the Second World War.
The EU establishment, represented by the Brussels administrative centre and pro-EU governments, is reeling from the Brexit shock.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly held emergency meetings with European Parliament leader Martin Schulz and European Council chief Donald Tusk; while EU foreign ministers convened in Berlin to discuss the permutations and how to stabilize the remaining 27-member bloc. Britain is the second biggest economy in the EU after Germany, so its negotiated departure over the next two years is a formidable challenge.
Over the next days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to hold crisis talks with French President Francois Hollande and Italian premier Matteo Renzi.
What these leaders fear most is that the Brexit will unleash a «domino effect» right across the whole of Europe. In virtually every country, including the foundational members, anti-EU parties are on the rise and flourishing. There is a veritable popular revolt against the EU establishment, which has come to be seen as undemocratic, autocratic and unresponsive to pressing social needs of employment, public services and general civic welfare.
European governments have got no-one else to blame but themselves. Whether they are nominally right, left or center, all conventional political parties – and the EU establishment that reflects them – have become ossified and inflexibly subordinate to neoliberal capitalist dictate. This has, in turn, engendered widespread poverty, unemployment and economic austerity, while the profits accrue to a tiny elite. The EU has become a cage of locked-in capitalist globalization, seemingly with no escape, as with much of the Westernized world.
Alternative opposition parties may not always express critique in such an anti-capitalist way, but they are united in their repudiation of what they see as a centralized oligarchy that operates out of Brussels. This has led to a counter-movement towards nationally controlled economies, as opposed to globalized form.
It is doubtful that many of the anti-EU parties can deliver remedial policies to what is the stagnancy of capitalist economics in the 21st Century. But one thing is sure: their supporters want to reject the failures of the status quo that is embodied in the contemporary EU.
An equally important form of inflexibility seen in the EU bloc is in foreign policy. The EU seems to have become a passive replica of the US-led NATO military alliance and under the thumb of Washington’s decree. Granted, most of the membership overlaps between the two organizations. But for many of the EU’s 500 million citizens, the EU’s lack of independence in foreign policy from Washington is a source of consternation.
The dangerous and economically damaging stand-off between Europe and Russia, largely at the behest of Washington, is a classic illustration of the problem.
The kowtowing by European governments and the Brussels administration to Washington’s policy of hostility towards Moscow is emblematic of the unaccountable and undemocratic nature of the EU bloc.
So too is the refugee crisis assailing European countries, which can be traced directly back to criminal US-led wars in North Africa and the Middle East, which the EU has colluded in or acquiesced to. And now is bearing the brunt of due to its servility towards Washington.
The popular revolt against the EU is far from homogenous. Some elements are impelled by reactionary, xenophobic nationalism. Some by chauvinism and romanticized notions of «traditional capitalism». Among some elements, there may even be fervent support for NATO militarism and pro-American hostility towards Russia.
But with Britain’s departure from the EU, Washington and the NATO alliance has lost one its most ardent supporters within the bloc. The Cameron government, after all, was the major proponent of tough sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, and London’s Atlanticist bias had preponderant leverage on the overall EU foreign policy position.
Britain leaving the EU can be seen as a blow to undermine the sway of Washington and NATO over Europe. And this progressive end was also a factor in support for the Brexit, as it is in the wider social revolt across Europe. The European revolt is not all about rightwing reactionaries; it is also about creating more democratic, independent European states, even if that necessitates the seemingly retrograde step of breaking up the EU under its present form.
The Brexit thus heralds much more than the shattering of the EU. On a national level, the United Kingdom is also prone to fracturing, while at the international level the Atlanticist bond with which Washington has dominated the EU is another fracture point.
Like the proverbial pane of glass, inflexible structures are always susceptible – at some stage – to fragmentation. The EU appears to have reached that critical pressure point.
European Union’s Imperial Overreach
By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | June 25, 2016
While few analysts are putting it this way, the European Union suffers from a self-inflicted crisis of overexpansion — a form of “imperial overstretch,” if you will. The Brexit vote was just the latest symptom of this policy disaster, which also includes escalating confrontations with Russia and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.
Public opinion polls in the United Kingdom established that widespread concern over immigration was the single most important factor driving voters to support an E.U. exit. Pro-Brexit campaigners made much of the statistics released just last month that net annual migration into the U.K. reached a third of a million people in 2015, double the rate just three years earlier.
Such numbers fed public concerns over the impact of immigrants on the country’s National Health System and other social services, as well as jobs. They also fed deep suspicions about government credibility.
As the Guardian reported after the stunning election victory for the Brexit camp, “David Cameron’s failure to give a convincing response to the publication of near-record net migration figures in the first week of the EU referendum campaign has proved to be its decisive moment.
“The figure of 333,000 not only underlined beyond any doubt that Britain had become a country of mass migration but also meant politicians who claimed they could make deep cuts in the numbers while Britain remained in the European Union were simply not believed.”
The influx of these newcomers had a deeper psychological effect on the public. “The British government’s inability to control (intra-European) migration is seen as emblematic of a wider loss of control,” wrote Oxford political theorist David Miller just before the election. “Many Britons feel that they are no longer in charge of their own destiny: ‘Take back our country’ is a slogan that resonates along the campaign trail.”
E.U. Expansion and Immigration
Roughly half of immigrants to the U.K. in recent years have come from other E.U. countries, taking advantage of the association’s fundamental commitment to the free movement of people. Their large numbers reflected the enormous expansion of the E.U. since 2004 — and the lure of Britain’s relatively affluent economy to poor workers from newer members like Poland and Romania.
The E.U. — which actually has a commissioner for “enlargement” — has expanded relentlessly without heeding concerns from grassroots constituents of its traditional core members. In 2004, the E.U. absorbed Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia — all low-wage countries with much lower standards of living than the likes of Germany, France or the U.K. In 2007, it also took in Romania and Bulgaria.
Official statistics show that citizens of these newer and poorer E.U. members account for nearly a third of net migration into the U.K. in recent years.
Although many economists defend free labor movement as good for the economy overall, the result — like that of free trade with low-wage countries — can harm less-skilled workers.
In 2011, two unpublished reports commissioned by the Department of Communities and Local Government made that point.
One warned senior government officials that sharply rising immigration could “increase tensions between migrant workers and other sections of the community” during the country’s recession. Another noted a huge rise in immigrants settling unexpectedly in rural areas, and concluded they were having “a negative impact on the wages of UK workers at the bottom of the occupational distribution.”
“We under-estimated significantly the number of people who were going to come in from Eastern Europe,” conceded Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party. “Economic migration and greater labour market flexibility have increased the pressure faced by those in lower skilled work.”
Ironically, many of the localities that voted most decisively for Brexit had relatively low migrant populations. But many of them are still suffering from economic austerity and sharp reductions in the social safety net imposed by the Conservative government since 2010.
“Switching the scapegoat from the government to the faceless migrant . . . is easier when people are scared for their livelihood, and more convenient for the politicians campaigning on both sides,” remarked the London-based writer Dawn Foster.
Voters were easily persuaded that “distant” and “faceless” E.U. bureaucrats just didn’t grasp their concerns. Indeed, the E.U. remains bent on continued expansion. It is currently in membership discussions with Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, and recognizes Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo as potential members.
Russia and Ukraine
The E.U.’s expansionist drive has had other costly repercussions for Britain and the rest of Europe. One notable disaster was its drive for an “association agreement” with Ukraine, a wide-ranging treaty that included not only provisions for tight economic integration, but also a commitment over time to abide by the E.U.’s Common Security and Defense Policy and European Defense Agency policies. On both fronts, the agreement was designed to pull Ukraine out of its traditional Russian orbit.
The E.U.’s expansion into Ukraine, like its expansion into the rest of Eastern Europe, was paralleled by the expansion of the NATO military alliance into the same countries, contrary to promises by Western leaders to their Russian counterparts in 1990. In 2008, NATO’s secretary general — backed by President George W. Bush and presidential candidate Barack Obama — pledged that Ukraine would be granted NATO membership.
Needless to say, Russia reacted badly, as it did to the E.U.’s later power play. It pressured the government of President Viktor Yanukovych to resist entreaties by NATO and the E.U. His refusal to break with Russia in turn triggered the so-called “Euromaidan” protests and the Western-backed putsch that ousted his government in February 2014.
Within a month, the new pro-European and pro-U.S. prime minister, Arseniy Yatseniuk, had signed the political provisions of the E.U. agreement. Just months later, he declared that he would seek NATO membership as well.
The result has been a bloody civil war in Eastern Ukraine; dangerous and costly military confrontations between Russia and NATO; and mutual economic sanctions that impoverish both Russia and the E.U.
Future historians will help us understand the underlying sources of the E.U.’s self-destructive expansion. No doubt they include some combination of ideological faith in the universality of European values, bureaucratic aggrandizement, and pandering to neo-liberal elites. Whatever the causes, the results now threaten the entire European project.
The E.U.’s future will require serious self-examination on many fronts, but especially about its grandiose ambitions for expansion.
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012).
Podemos Threatens Spain’s Unity By Backing Catalan Independence Referendum
Sputnik — 25.06.2016
MADRID — Spain’s left-wing Podemos party threatens the country’s unity by supporting an independence referendum to be held in the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia, Jose Ramon Garcia-Hernandez, the head of international relations of Spain’s ruling People’s Party (PP), told Sputnik on Saturday.
Unidos Podemos, an electoral alliance between Podemos and several other left-wing parties, has backed allowing Catalonia to hold a binding independence referendum, a move which has garnered significant support for the party in the region.
“The main opponent in these elections [Podemos] puts at risk the unity of Spain… Those who want to separate Catalonia from Spain should know that they are not going to achieve this because they are going against the majority of the Catalans and the Spanish,” Garcia-Hernandez said.
All public authorities, especially the government, have a duty to protect national unity, he added, stressing that the PP will uphold Spain’s laws and prevent secession.
Spain is due to hold a snap general election on Sunday, with the PP and Podemos running alongside the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) after failing to form a coalition government. In last year’s election, the PP won 123 seats in the lower house of parliament, 64 less than in the previous election. The PSOE won 90, and Podemos came third, securing 69 seats. At least 176 seats are required for a parliamentary majority, necessary to form a government.
Catalonia held a non-binding referendum on independence from Spain in 2014. Over 80 percent voted in favor of the autonomous community becoming an independent state.
The Heirs of Meyer Lansky Want Compensation from Cuba. They Shouldn’t Get a Dime.
By Jack Colhoun | History News Network | June 19, 2016
Meyer Lansky
The heirs of Meyer Lansky, the impresario of the North American Mafia gambling colony in Cuba (1933-1958) are betting on a big payback from the negotiations between the United States and Cuba to normalize relations between the two countries. Compensation claims by U.S. citizens or businesses for properties nationalized by the Cuban revolution are among the issues under discussion.
Lansky’s daughter Sandi, her son Gary Rapoport, and her brother Paul have filed a compensation claim against Cuba for the Riviera Hotel and Casino with the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. The Cuban revolution confiscated the Riviera and other Mafia-owned properties after it toppled the gangster-linked regime of General Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
“It was through my grandfather’s hard work that the hotel was built,” Rapoport told the U. K. Daily Mail Online on December 23, 2015. “We are his natural relations . . . . By right, it should be our property.” He says the Riviera is valued at $70 million. The Tampa Bay Tribune, Reuters, and Haaretz have also covered the story.
The Riviera, which overlooks the Straits of Florida, was the crown jewel of Lansky’s casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in Havana. When the Riviera opened in December 1957, it was the largest Mafia-owned hotel-casino outside Las Vegas. The hotel’s 440 double rooms were booked solid for the winter season of 1957-1958.
However, the narrative that the success of the Riviera was the product of Meyer Lansky’s “hard work” is undercut by Lansky’s own assessment of his arrangement with Batista. Lansky talked candidly about his years in Cuba with Israeli national security writers Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau for their admiring biography Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob (Paddington Press, 1979). (Lansky lived in Israel in 1970-1971 to avoid tax evasion charges in the United States.)
Lansky pitched his plan to Batista to open Mafia owned casinos and nightclubs in Cuba in 1933. Lansky promised to make Batista, who had just come to power in a coup d’etat, a partner. Batista and his inner circle would get regular payments from the Mafia gamblers. In return, the gangsters would be allowed to operate without interference from Cuban authorities. With a handshake and an abrazo, Lansky and Batista laid the foundations of the Cuban gangster state.
“Working on the well-known principle that it’s better to use other people’s money than your own, Lansky persuaded Batista to have the Cuban government help finance the venture,” Eisenberg, Dan, and Landau wrote. “The [Cuban] government agreed to back every dollar invested on the island by foreigners with a dollar of its own and to give every hotel that cost more than one million dollars the precious prize of a gambling license . . . and the casino hotels would not have to pay Cuban taxes.”
The Riviera was one of four new hotels with casinos, which opened in Havana between 1955 and 1958. Cuban development banks subsidized 50 percent of Lansky’s $14 million Riviera project; Lansky-linked investors provided the rest. Senator Eduardo Suarez Rivas, brother of Batista’s Minister of Labor Jose Suarez Rivas, was secretary of the Compania de Hotels La Riviera de Cuba, which operated the Riviera.
The Mafia gambling colony was the cornerstone of the Cuban gangster state. The gangsters’ graft bound Batista, his inner circle, senior security officers, and the Mafia together in the defense of one of the most repressive regimes in Latin America. As a CIA report put it, “In return for the loyalty they gave him, Batista always backed his security services. In times of crisis, he often suspended civil guarantees . . . and gave the services a free hand.”
The days of the North American gangsters in Cuba were numbered when Batista fled into exile on January 1, 1959. In 1958, Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement had denounced the Mafia radio broadcasts from its guerrilla redoubt in the Sierra Maestra for turning Havana into a center of commercialized vice – gambling, prostitution, and drugs. When Castro arrived in Havana on January 8, he vowed to “clean out all the gamblers.” The Riviera and other gangster-owned properties were nationalized, and the Mafia gamblers returned to the United States.
To regain control of its casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in post-Castro Cuba, the Mafia waged a covert war on the Cuban revolution. The gangsters regrouped with their Cuban political allies, now in exile in the United States. The Mafia subsidized Cuban exile leaders and supplied arms to Cuban exile commando groups for attacks on Cuban targets from speedy boats and small aircraft. The gangsters also plotted with the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro.
In 1959, Lansky volunteered to arrange the assassination of Castro in a meeting with the CIA, according to Doc Stacher, a life-long Lansky associate. “He [Lansky] indicated to the CIA that some of his people who were still on the island, or those who were just going back, might assassinate Castro,” Stacher told his Israeli biographers. “Meyer Lansky thought that if Castro would be eliminated there was a good chance for Batista to make a comeback . . . He told them [CIA officers] he was quite prepared to finance the operation himself.” From 1960 to 1963, the CIA and the Mafia plotted covertly to assassinate Castro.
To portray Lansky as an aggrieved victim of Cuba is to stand history on its head. There should be no compensation for the heirs of the former Mafia gamblers in Cuba.
Jack Colhoun is an historian of the Cold War (University of Wisconsin, Madison, BA, 1968; York University, Toronto, PhD, 1976), an investigative reporter, and professional archival researcher. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Toronto Star, Salon, History News Network, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, the former (New York) Guardian newsweekly, and formerCovert Action Quarterly. He is the author of Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia, 1933-1966 (New York: OR Books, 2013).
Israeli soldiers shot Palestinian boy ‘deliberately’, claims B’Tselem
MEMO | June 25, 2016
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has said that the shooting of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on Tuesday night was “deliberate, entirely unjustified and a direct result of military policy.” The group’s report gave details of the incident during which Mahmoud Badran was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. The boy from Beit Ur a-Tahta was with four of his friends at the time; they were wounded in the unprovoked attack.
“The shots were fired at a car with seven passengers inside, who were making their way back from a night out at a water park,” reported B’Tselem. “The military initially announced the soldiers had ‘targeted terrorists who were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli cars on Road 443’, but later changed its version and stated the boy had been ‘mistakenly’ killed.” The organisation’s field-researcher indicated that “the soldiers used heavy fire against the moving car without any justification.”
According to B’Tselem, said: “At around 1:30am, seven residents… were making their way home after a night out at the Lin Land Waterpark in the village of Beit Sira. When the car approached a narrow underpass used by Palestinian vehicles to get across Road 443, [Israeli] soldiers standing on the road, on top of the underpass, opened massive fire at the car from a distance of 40 to 50 metres.”
Most of the passengers in the car were hit by the shots, including the driver, who lost control and crashed into a wall. “Five of the seven passengers were hit in the shooting: Mahmoud Badran was killed instantly, four passengers were injured.”
Armenia is Swarmed by Western NGOs
By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 25.06.2016
The tactics of employing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for the preparation of so-called “color revolutions” in North Africa, the Middle East and a number of former Soviet states has been the modus operandi of the US and its satellites, which have been thoroughly discussed in various NEO articles.
It’s curious that these NGOs who are heavily sponsored by Washington choose to act precisely in those moments when a specific state begins resisting pressure applied on it by the so-called Western World. This resistance often is manifested as a reluctance to support certain projects that were put forward by Washington.
If we are to talk about post-Soviet regions, all Western NGOs, and American ones in particular, have been particularly active in Central Asian and Caucasus states over recent years in a bid to launch “color revolutions” across the majority of them.
Western NGOs have been particularly active in Armenia recently, which remains Russia’s most faithful ally in the Caucasus region. In an effort to repeat a Ukrainian-style scenario in Armenia and to force this country away from Russia, these Western-backed organizations have been trying to use any minor concern among the civilian population to provoke demonstrations and unrest, taking advantage of the huge funds they have been receiving.
For example, over the past 5 years, a research center of the US-Armenian University has been carrying a wide variety of different programs. The absolute majority of its employees are foreigners (immigrants from the United States and Europe), or Armenian citizens who graduated from this very university or received part of their education in the United States. The better part of the above mentioned programs are aimed at reducing the usage of the Russian language in Armenia and the deconstruction of Soviet history and heritage. Washington is convinced that those measures that have already been tested in Ukraine could allow it to strike a note of discord between Russia and Armenia as well.
According to various reports, including a report prepared by the UN, the number of NGOs that are constantly operating in Armenia in such fields as “social equality,” “freedom of speech,” and “human rights protection” exceeds two hundred. At the same time, the US Embassy is actively supporting local media sources, including the well-known “Voice of Armenia.” It’s estimated that the US Embassy is providing financial support to over 60% of all media outlets in Armenia, in hopes that this would allow it to keep a firm grip on public perception within the country, and limiting Russia’s and Iran’s involvement in Transcaucasia.
But US think tanks seek to take all of this one step further by systematically undermining the traditional values of Armenians, such as morality and family traditions. This goal is being pursued through the creation of an unprecedented number of religious sects that are appearing in Armenia each week. For some “strange reason” the headquarters of those sects are always based in the United States, no matter whether the sect is following Baha’i, Hare Krishnas, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, Scientologists, or other beliefs.
It’s curious that, conversely, in a truly democratic France, the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect is officially prohibited by law as a “cult.”
The Mormon sect which was the first to appear in Armenia in the early 90s was founded by the representatives of US secret services and military contractors. It’s hardly a secret that CIA creates such sects in states where the US is planning a coup d’etat to prepare a faithful proxy government beforehand.
The so-called “Church of Scientology” has also been pursuing similar goals, since it’s run by professional American agents. It is only logical that in most states the activities of Scientology sects are prohibited by law and regarded as a breach of national security. But in the US this sect enjoys complete freedom and even the tacit support of Washington. There’s a very good reason for this paradox, since back in 1959 the then CIA Director Allen Dulles struck a deal with the founder of the sect, Ron Hubbard, according to which the CIA would allow the “Church of Scientology” to operate freely in the US, it would get in return assistance in overseas operations and unconditional access to the the information this church accumulates in foreign states.
The above stated facts may explain why Armenia hosts one of the largest US embassies in the whole world, in spite of the fact that this country is relatively small in comparison to other nations. Nevertheless, the US still needs over five thousand NGOs under its control in Armenia, while spending up to 250 million dollars annually to keep them running.
Brexit could have destroyed UK…& it might be for the best
RT | June 24, 2016
It looks increasingly possible that Brexit will lead to the demise of the United Kingdom. That may be for the best, as it’s abundantly clear that the four members now have markedly different concerns.
Do you remember where you were on May 1, 2004? I do. I was in Dublin watching the Irish government – which held the rotating European Union presidency – welcome 10 new members to the bloc. It was the single biggest expansion, in terms of population, in the EU’s history. But tellingly, not in terms of wealth.
Make no mistake: that was also the day Britain’s membership of the EU became unsustainable. Because the main reason Brexit has been passed is English anger at the consequences of unfettered mass immigration. Despite a negative fertility rate (1.75 in 2004 vs. 2.41 in 1971), the population of the United Kingdom rose from 59.99 million in 2004 to 64.1 million in 2013. That surge of over 4 million in less than a decade is greater than the entire increase in the 33 years from 1971-2004.
Before the 2004 expansion, which admitted the likes of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Baltic States, internal EU migration was manageable. That was down to the fact that living standards weren’t vastly different across the union. For example, life in Portugal, the then-poorest member, wasn’t that much worse than in wealthier countries like Germany, France and Denmark. However, the gap between wages in Latvia, for instance, and London was astounding. Back in 2004, the average worker in Riga brought home €239 ($265) a month. That was less than 10 percent of London incomes which were £2,058 (around €2,900 at the time). Thus, it’s hard to blame east Europeans for seizing the opportunity to move west.
Ill fares the land
Britain’s post-war social democratic consensus has been under pressure since the Thatcher years, but EU expansion collapsed it. Rightly or wrongly, resentment has taken hold at the perception, fueled by the media, that foreigners are abusing the UK benefit’s system. Meanwhile, British workers have endured declines in real wages in the past decade. The reason is easy to understand. The wide availability of cheap labor, unrestricted by visa requirements, has enabled employers to conduct a race to the bottom, heightening inequality. And to make things worse, the population explosion has increased competition for housing, leading to enormous inflation in rent and property prices. Put simply, for common folk, life in England is getting worse.
I say England, rather than Britain, because this is all about England. Or more precisely, England and Wales, (except London of course, which is a different world entirely these days). Scotland and Northern Ireland have overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU. Of course, for reasons of climate and economics, both are far less attractive to migrants than England or Wales and their status as net recipients from the UK budget means they have less at stake than other regions. Yet, things aren’t that simple.
Ulster says yes
Northern Ireland needs the EU because the peace settlement which ended its decades-long civil war, or ‘Troubles,’ was contingent on Dublin and London being legally joined via Brussels. Additionally, Ulster’s economy is heavily-dependent on trade with the vastly richer Irish state. In Scotland’s case, attitudes to ‘Britishness’ differ from those in England. In Scotland, to be British is to face inwards, but to be European is to face outwards. Down south, ‘Englishness’ and ‘Britishness’ are mostly synonymous.
Now, 62 percent of Scots have voted to remain in the EU, but because they are controlled by London, their democratic wishes matter not a jot. With that in mind, it’s hardly a surprise that Scottish Nationalists have already issued calls for a new referendum on independence.
One that even those who passionately supported the survival of the UK in 2014 might support.
In Northern Ireland things are less straightforward.
Pro-Irish republicans were far more likely to support the EU than pro-British loyalists, whose leaders campaigned for Brexit. The (historically mainly-Catholic) nationalists will now hope that moderate unionists (usually nominally-Protestant) can be persuaded to support a united Ireland, sacrificing ethnic tradition for economic reality. However, there is no guarantee that citizens of Ireland itself would agree to accept them at this time. The south has only just recovered from the greatest economic crisis in its history and may feel it cannot afford unity. Unless of course, Brussels is willing to underwrite the project. That is not as outlandish as it seems. Because Eurocrats are angry and may want to ‘punish’ England.
Eurocrat rage
The European Parliament president, Germany’s Martin Schulz, announced Friday morning that there will be “consequences” for Britain so other EU countries are not “encouraged to follow that dangerous path.” Now Shulz’s comments might be mean and vindictive and show contempt for democracy, but they also reflect realpolitik in Brussels.
If the UK, or whatever is left of it, is successful outside the EU, it will be the biggest disaster imaginable for the EU establishment – an elite of unelected rootless cosmopolitans often contemptuous of public opinion. It will show that a brighter future is possible and expose ‘project fear’ as a load of baloney. Brussels has pushed a mantra for nearly 60 years now that European integration makes things better and that there is no alternative. If a country as important as England proves that theory wrong, all bets are off. Actually, maybe they already are.
Let’s be honest, nobody really expected this result. Even UKIP leader Nigel Farage practically conceded defeat for Brexit on Thursday night. When people realized, early Friday morning, that Leave was winning, it was as much of a shock as if England had beaten Germany in a penalty shoot-out. In ice hockey. Even Brexit’s best known exponent, Boris Johnson, looked stunned when he eventually emerged to face the cameras.
We are now in uncharted waters. A member state has decided to leave the EU. A major one at that. Furthermore, the vote has exposed deep divisions inside the UK itself. Discord perhaps profound enough to mean its demise. Nevertheless, in the long term, such an outcome may be better for all concerned.
Trump Will Not Recognize Palestinian Statehood if elected President
Sputnik – 25.06.2016
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backtracked from his neutral position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and is now “committed” to supporting Israeli settlement expansion on territories it has seized illegally, according to an advisor.
David M. Friedman, a real-estate attorney serving as Trump’s main advisor on Israel, said the Republican presidential candidate and reality television star would not support the recognition of the Palestinian state without “the approval of the Israelis.” Friedman also remarked that Trump was unconcerned with the inhabitants of the West Bank, because “nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”
Trump made Friedman a part of his campaign staff in April, at a meeting with Orthodox Jews, naming him and Jason Greenblatt, another real-estate lawyer and Trump’s chief attorney, as his advisors on Israel. Friedman said at the time, “Mr. Trump’s confidence is very flattering. My views on Israel are well known, and I would advise him in a manner consistent with those views. America’s geopolitical interests are best served by a strong and secure Israel, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital.” Friedman has made no secret of his feelings about a two-state solution with Palestine, writing that, “It was never a solution, just an illusion that served both the US and the Arabs.”
Trump has earned a reputation for taking contradictory stances on issues, and when asked in May if he thought Israel should cease construction in the West Bank, the candidate said, “No, I don’t think there should be a pause… because I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.” Later in the same interview he remarked, “I’d love to negotiate peace. I think that, to me, is the all-time negotiation… I would love to see if peace could be negotiated. A lot of people say that’s not a deal that’s possible. But I mean lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again. So we’ll see what happens.”
Friedman says Trump’s attitude toward Israel is positive, and his view on the Palestinian state springs, in part, to a lack of power on the part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “His [Trump’s] feeling about Israel,” Freidman said, “is that it is a robust democracy. He does not think it is an American imperative for [Gaza Strip and other territories seized by Israel] to be an independent Palestinian state.”
When asked directly about his own feelings on recognizing the State of Palestine, Friedman was open, if tentative.
“If the Israelis conclude that they need to do this [recognize the Palestinian state] in order to enhance their long-term security – which I think we are very skeptical about – but if this is what they conclude they want to do, we will respect this decision…. If the circumstances change… and there is a reason to be optimistic, then great, but the current facts don’t make that [recognizing the Palestinian state] an American imperative at all.” he said.
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Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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