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The Salvador Option: the US is Once Again Supporting Death Squads in Central America

By Brett Wilkins | CounterPunch | June 5, 2018

The United States has been quietly funding and equipping elite paramilitary police units in El Salvador accused of extrajudicially murdering suspected gang members, according to a forthcoming United Nations report reviewed in advance by CNN.

Beginning with George W. Bush in 2003, successive US administrations have provided tens of millions of dollars in aid for Salvadoran military and police in support of the government’s “Mano Dura” (“Firm Hand”) security program, an aggressive campaign to combat out-of-control gang violence in a country with one of the world’s highest homicide rates.

“Mano Dura” aid increased significantly during the Obama administration, which compared the effort to Plan Colombia, the decades-long anti-drug campaign in which billions of US aid dollars funded mafia-like army units that, along with allied paramilitary death squads, kidnapped, tortured and murdered thousands of innocent civilians with impunity. As was the case with Plan Colombia, the new UN report will accuse Salvadoran security forces, in this case some of its elite police units, of “a pattern of behavior by security personnel amounting to extrajudicial executions” and a “cycle of impunity” in which such killings go unpunished.

One police unit, the Special Reaction Forces (FES), killed 43 suspected gang members during the first half of 2017, according to the UN report. While FES officers were executing suspects in the streets, the US government continued to fund and equip the unit. Washington’s total assistance increased from $67.9 million in 2016 to $72.7 million last year. The deportation of members of MS-13 — formed in Los Angeles by young Salvadoran refugees fleeing civil war in a homeland ruled by a US-backed military dictatorship — and other gangs has further exacerbated the crisis.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in San Salvador assured CNN that “the US government takes allegations of extrajudicial killings extremely seriously,” that it has “consistently expressed concerns” regarding human rights abuses and that it heavily vets units receiving aid. These assurances ring hollow to many Salvadorans who recall how the Ronald Reagan administration covered up horrific human rights violations in order to keep military aid flowing to the anti-communist military regime during the 1980s civil war.

That aid, which included forming, training, funding and arming military death squads, began during the Carter administration and dramatically increased under Reagan. Officers, troops and police were trained in kidnapping, torture, assassination and democracy suppression at the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), also known as the School of Coups and School of Assassins because it produced so many of both.

SOA graduates and other US-backed Salvadoran security forces planned, ordered and committed the most heinous atrocities of the 12-year civil war, including the kidnapping, torture, rape and murder of four American nuns and church volunteers in 1980, the assassination of the country’s beloved Catholic archbishop, Oscar Romero, that same year and themassacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989. After the four churchwomen were slain, the Reagan administration undertook a shameful effort to place blame on the victims.

The most notorious Salvadoran army unit, the Atlacatl Battalion, was created in 1980 at the SOA and hailed as “the pride of the United States military team in El Salvador.” As a rite of passage its new troops collected roadkill carcasses — “dogs, vultures, anything,” according to one former member — and boiled them into a soup they all drank. Atlacatl Battalion’s human victims fared even worse than the dead animals its recruits consumed. The unit committed countless massacres, including the slaughter of 117 men, women and children at Lake Suchitlan in 1983 and the mass murder of 68 civilians, many of them children, at Los Llanitos the following year.

But even these massacres paled in comparison to Atlacatl’s deadliest crime, the wholesale slaughter of more than 900 villagers, mostly women, children and the elderly, at El Mozote on December 11, 1981. There, soldiers shot, stabbed, hacked, smashed, and hung helpless villagers to death. They gang-raped women and girls before killing them. They skewered babies on bayonets. They dropped large rocks on the bellies of pregnant women. When the raping and murdering finished, they burned El Mozote to the ground, reducing the village to what one witness called “a moving black carpet” of scavenging vultures, flies and dogs feasting on the victims.

The day after El Mozote made front page headlines in the US, President Reagan officially certified that El Salvador was “making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights,” and was working to “bring an end to the indiscriminate torture and murder of Salvadoran citizens.” Meanwhile, Elliott Abrams, then a State Department human rights official who was later convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal before serving as a special assistant to President George W. Bush,  helped lead an effort to deny the El Mozote massacre ever happened.

US aid to El Salvador was doubled, and heinous atrocities continued through the end of the civil war.

It wasn’t just El Salvador. The United States also supported or covered up death squad activity throughout Central and South America in the 1970s and ‘80s. In Guatemala, it backed right-wing military dictators including Efraín Ríos Montt, who recently died facing genocide charges, as well as brutal death squads like the army’s elite Kaibiles unit, which tortured, raped and murdered more than 200 villagers at Dos Erres in December, 1982.

In Honduras, Reagan’s ambassador, John Negroponte, supervised the creation of the notorious Battalion 316, which was tasked with eliminating students, academics, labor unionists, clergy, journalists, indigenous rights activists and others deemed a threat to the dictatorship. Negroponte also played a key role in supporting the US-backed Contra army as it waged a terrorist war against the people of Nicaragua.

It also wasn’t just in the past. After a 2009 military coup deposed the progressive Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya, Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton backed the repressive right-wing regime even as reports of its brutality, which included forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions of opponents, were revealed. Despite the assassination of high-profile critics including the environmental activist Berta Cáceres, the Obama administration lavished the Honduran coup regime and its murderous security forces with  tens of millions of dollars in military and other assistance.

The United States has long operated or supported death squads, from the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam (40,000 killed) through the implementation of the “Salvador option” during the recent invasion and occupation of Iraq. The latter effort was run by Col. James Steele, a decorated veteran of Central America’s dirty wars, including a stint training Salvadoran death squad units during the civil war. Unsurprisingly, secret prisons, torture and extrajudicial killings became commonplace throughout occupied Iraq.

It now appears that the “Salvador option” has made its way back home from halfway around the world, further terrorizing guilty and innocent alike in what was already one of the most frightful corners of the planet.

Brett Wilkins is editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Palestine is not occupied, it is colonised

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 5, 2018

June 5 2018 marks the 51st anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

But, unlike the massive popular mobilisation that preceded the anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of Palestine in 1948 – on 15 May the anniversary of the occupation is hardly generating equal mobilisation.

The unsurprising death of the ‘peace process’ and the inevitable demise of the ‘two-state solution’ has shifted the focus from ending the occupation per se to the larger, and more encompassing, problem of Israel’s colonialism throughout Palestine.

Grassroots mobilisation in Gaza and the West Bank, and among Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab Desert, are, once more, widening the Palestinian people’s sense of national aspirations. Thanks to the limited vision of the Palestinian leadership those aspirations have, for decades, been confined to Gaza and the West Bank.

In some sense the ‘Israeli occupation’ is no longer an occupation as per international standards and definitions. It is merely a phase of the Zionist colonisation of historic Palestine, a process that began over a 100 years ago, and carries on to this day.

“The law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian consideration; it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application”, states the International Committee of the Red Cross website.

It is for practical purposes that we often utilise the term ‘occupation’ with reference to Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land, occupied after 5 June 1967. The term allows for the constant emphasis on humanitarian rules that are meant to govern Israel’s behavior as the occupying power.

However, Israel has already, and repeatedly, violated most conditions of what constitute an ‘occupation’ from an international law perspective, as articulated in the 1907 Hague Regulations (articles 42-56) and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.

According to these definitions, an ‘occupation’ is a provisional phase, a temporary situation that is meant to end with the implementation of international law regarding that particular situation.

‘Military occupation’ is not the sovereignty of the occupier over the occupied; it cannot include the transfer of citizens from the territories of the occupying power to occupied land; it cannot include ethnic cleansing; destruction of properties; collective punishment and annexation.

It is often argued that Israel is an occupier that has violated the rules of occupation as stated in international law.

This would have been the case a year, two or five years after the original occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the occupation has turned into long-term colonisation.

An obvious proof is Israel’s annexation of occupied land, including the Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1981. That decision had no regard for international law, humanitarian law or any other law.

Israeli politicians have, for years, openly debated the annexation of the West Bank, especially areas that are populated with illegal Jewish settlements, which are built contrary to international law.

Those hundreds of settlements that Israel has been building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not meant as temporary structures.

Dividing the West Bank into three zones, areas A, B and C, each governed according to different political diktats and military roles, has little precedent in international law.

Israel argues that, contrary to international law, it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza; however, an Israel land, maritime and aerial siege has been imposed on the Strip for over 11 years. From successive Israeli wars that have killed thousands, to a hermetic blockade that has pushed the Palestinian population to the brink of starvation, Gaza subsists in isolation.

Gaza is an ‘occupied territory’ by name only, without any of the humanitarian rules applied. In the last 10 weeks alone, over 120 unarmed protesters, journalists and medics were killed and 13,000 wounded, yet the international community and law remain inept, unable to face or challenge Israeli leaders or to overpower equally cold-hearted American vetoes.

The Palestinian Occupied Territories have, long ago, crossed the line from being occupied to being colonised. But there are reasons that we are trapped in old definitions, leading amongst them is American political hegemony over the legal and political discourses pertaining to Palestine.

One of the main political and legal achievements of the Israeli war – which was carried out with full US support – on several Arab countries in June 1967 is the redefining of the legal and political language on Palestine.

Prior to that war, the discussion was mostly dominated by such urgent issues as the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees to go back to their homes and properties in historic Palestine.

The June war shifted the balance of power completely, and cemented America’s role as Israel’s main backer on the international stage.

Several UN Security Council resolutions were passed to delegitimise the Israeli occupation: UNSCR 242, UNSCR 338, and the less talked about but equally significant UNSCR 497.

Resolution 242 of 1967 demanded “withdrawal of Israel armed forces” from the territories it occupied in the June war. Resolution 338, which followed the war of 1973, accentuated and clarified that demand. Resolution 497 of 1981 was a response to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. It rendered such a move “null and void and without international and legal affect”.

The same applied to the annexation of Jerusalem as to any colonial constructions or any Israeli attempts aimed at changing the legal status of the West Bank.

But Israel is operating with an entirely different mindset.

Considering that anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli Jews now live in the ‘Occupied Territories’, and that the largest settlement of Modi’in Illit houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews, one has to wonder what form of military occupation blue-print Israel is implementing, anyway?

Israel is a settler colonial project, which began when the Zionist movement aspired to build an exclusive homeland for Jews in Palestine, at the expense of the native inhabitants of that land in the late 19th century.

Nothing has changed since. Only facades, legal definitions and political discourse. The truth is that Palestinians continue to suffer the consequences of Zionist colonialism and they will continue to carry that burden until that original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Knesset blocks bill defining Israel as ‘country of all citizens’

MEMO |June 5, 2018

A bill calling for Israel to be defined as a state of all its citizens was stopped before it reached the Knesset for discussion yesterday.

Submitted by three Joint List Members of the Knesset, the Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens stood contrary to efforts to define Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” thus denied equal rights to its non-Jewish citizens.

Haaretz reported Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon “said that the legislation seemed to be aimed at altering basic principles – for example, by essentially cancelling the Law of Return (which declares the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel), and determining instead that receipt of Israeli citizenship will be based on a person’s familial affiliation to another citizen of the state.”

This is the first time proposed legislation has been thrown out before being discussed in the last two Knesset terms.

Arab MKs Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Joumah Azbarga had submitted the draft bill.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

In the absence of favourable media coverage, US and Israel seek distortion of facts

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 5, 2018

While Israel’s snipers continue to extract Palestinian lives from the Great Return March protests, it has also failed to sell its usual narrative to media outlets, causing US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to lash out at journalists, accusing them of bias against the settler-colonial state: “Just keep your mouths shut until you figure it out.”

According to the Times of Israel, Friedman stated that nine out of 10 articles were critical of Israel and its use of lethal force against Palestinians protesting at the Gaza border. Calling the protests “unprecedented”, Friedman stated: “Without this comparative analysis, all the reporting is completely superficial.”

Bloodshed, however, fits another narrative, and one that has stood the test of comparative analysis since Israel’s inception. The analysis Friedman is after consists of parroting Israel’s propaganda of terrorism and security concerns. Refusal to adhere to Israel’s trajectories is classified as “creating impressions that have no basis in fact”, in Friedman’s words.

Yet the bullets, injuries and deaths speak for themselves, as does Israel’s premeditated decision to execute Palestinians clamouring for their right of return. Israel has not invented snipers on the border – they operate upon direct orders. Neither have Palestinians invented the extrajudicial killings of their comrades by sniper fire. On the other hand, the Israeli army has not hesitated to blame the killings on Hamas which, according to Friedman’s rhetoric, would be justified as expert opinion.

Such expert opinion as desired by Friedman would also classify the Palestinian right of return as “infiltration”. Non-lethal means of crowd dispersal, according to the US ambassador, would have been ineffective at the border.

To take up Friedman’s request of comparative analysis, it is not the protests that should be analysed, but the means used by Israel to entrench its colonial presence and violence.

Israel does not choose lethal means of containment as a last resort. Its penchant for bloodshed is an integral part of its foundation. Hence, for Israel, there is historical justification for violence based upon its fabricated narratives of ownership and expansion. Despite Friedman’s allegations of bias, a significant portion of the current reporting is still tethered to the Israeli narrative due to it being divested from the historical context that rendered Palestinians refugees and therefore within their rights to return to their lands.

It is convenient for Friedman to seek comparisons only within the immediate context in which, he rightly states, there is no precedent. To overcome that intentionally-restrictive impediment, comparing and bringing forth trends of Israeli violence since 1948 would work well in portraying Israel’s dependence upon killing Palestinians to safeguard its existence.

The nature of these protests and Israel’s response has triggered a new wave of awareness internationally. Whereas, in previous years, Gaza’s prominence was tied to the periodic aggressions waged by Israel against the enclave and thus dominated by misattributions of purported war as opposed to colonial violence, the protests have exposed Israel’s ultimate aim of maintaining its policy of killing Palestinians as part of its expansionist plans. The Great Return March protests have exposed the Israeli agenda while setting a precedent with regard to an understanding of the Palestinian right of return. For Friedman to dedicate a considerable portion of his speaking time denouncing a different approach in reporting, it is clear that Palestinians have surpassed a major obstacle in terms of disseminating their anti-colonial struggle, while Israel has remained entrenched in its atrocities, refined to the point of eliciting global revulsion.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Why the Evidence Mueller Has for the Indicting 13 Russian Nationals is Fraudulent

By George Elias | OffGuardian | June 5, 2018

It’s almost a shame that a headline like that won’t spark anything more than casual curiosity when you consider the charges Richard Mueller is looking into. The Russian company Concord Management decided to answer his charges in early May, which threw a wrench into Mueller’s strategy.

I’m more interested in showing what Robert Mueller’s sources are not, than who they are. This opens a much greater conspiracy that’s playing out in a complicit US media today. What do I mean? The flawed source for both investigators and journalists that know anything about the Russian troll factory in St. Petersburg, Russia is Shaltai Boltai. They are supposed to be connected to the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence).

Fancy Bear is also supposedly the GRU hacking team that everyone is actually looking for. Shaltai Boltai is supposed to have those connections. Is it an official Intel operation or was a criminal undertaking to discredit Russia?

Over a year ago, I found evidence of the identity of Crowdstrike’s Fancy Bear, just short of a confession. When I looked into Shaltai Boltai, I found additional information that is even better for identifying Fancy Bear. The next article will detail that clearly.

Once it’s clear that the source of Mueller’s evidence – Russian hackers called Shaltai Boltai (Humpty Dumpty) – did NOT hack Concord Catering or the Russian government, we can cross off a couple of hackers from our list on our way to Fancy Bear. Shaltai Boltai tried unsuccessfully to confess to the DNC hacks.

They aren’t the hackers they make themselves out to be. They are Information Operation (IO) specialists that were paid to build a narrative which became a convenient hook for Mueller to hang his coat on.

Unfortunately, the slam dunk he would have won if they stayed away was taken from his grasp the second real people materialized. You see, Robert Mueller has to prove the Internet Research Company existed in reality and did the things he alleges.

He now has to authenticate the communications from the Troll Farm that his Russian interference investigation is based on and he can’t do it. This was the reason Mueller asked to delay the trial instead of moving forward. His case is built on fraudulent (nonexistent) evidence. Even that is laughable because what he is alleging goes against the grain of some of his foundational documentary evidence.

The source for Mueller’s indictment are Russian traitors that were hired for the purpose of destroying Russia. That Mueller’s evidence was an Information Operation to discredit both the Kremlin and the current US government changes everything because fabricated evidence is still considered too tainted to use in a court of law, even if the defendant is Russian.

Let’s get down to brass tacks and avoid any confusion. Once you understand that the original source of information for the Internet Research Agency, viz. hackers calling themselves Shaltai Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), fabricated the evidence, you understand the irresolvable problem Mueller stepped into.

Mueller’s problem in this scenario, according to what should be a foundational article by Scott Humor at the Saker, is that the “Internet Research Agency”, which existed only on paper, ceased to exist in 2015. It was liquidated and merged with a construction retail company called TEKA. I found Humor’s article after almost finishing this one. He left little need for any additional research on the matter.

About the troll farm, he notes the results of a court case that an NGO was pushing to get legal recognition of the troll farm as a working business in St Petersburg. It didn’t work out.

One example, a woman with the last name Malcheva filed a lawsuit in court against the companies “Internet Research, LLC” and “TEKA, LLC,” claiming unpaid wages.

The court asked her to produce evidence of her work, and then denied her claim after she produced a photo of a computer with an IP address on its screen as evidence of her employment.

IP Address 109.167.231.85
inetnum: 109.167.231.0 – 109.167.231.255
netname: WESTCALL-NET
descr: S-Peterburg Hotel Corintia Wi-Fi

An IP address that was assigned to a luxury hotel in Saint-Petersburg. A hotel that was awarded multiple international awards for excellence. An immensely popular hotel among discriminating travelers. A very expensive hotel located in the center of a historic city. The woman claimed that she was an “online troll” working from this location ten hours a day with hundreds of other virtual trolls. The judge didn’t believe her. Would you? – Scott Humor Saker.is

Secondly, and more importantly, is that although charged with treason by the Russian government, the “hackers” did not serve time for hacking. They served time for conspiring against the Russian government. This is an important point.

First things first, how do I know it is an information operation against the United States? Everything hinges on how carefully and accurately this single question is answered.

If Mueller is alleging that this entity interfered in the 2016 US election, yet all the information about it is faked, it is safe to say the word Information Operation.

The reason is simple. The “Anon” information Mueller uses for his indictment about the Russian Internet Research Agency every MSM news story is based on states quite clearly in the posts that it is an Information Operation. Shaltai Boltai reiterates this fact throughout different posts!

If only this single fact is true, Robert Mueller needs to step down to answer some questions. The first one is why he would knowingly take part in a foreign influence operation to publicly destroy the credibility of the United States Government?

Before getting into some of the fraudulent information, watch how the source purposefully discredits itself. I don’t think the hacker imagined things would bloom this large. The following are a couple of questions the hacker answered for a journalist. Question 2 was asked because this hacker group is anti-Putin and anti-Russian government as it stands.

The answer to question 3 states they are an Information Operation seeking to influence (policy). While it is a surprise that even a highly politicized investigation would claim fabrications as legitimate evidence, it’s more of a surprise that it wasn’t caught by MSM. You’ll see for yourself, the hackers were honest. Mueller, on the other hand, is not.

From the b0ltai.wordpress.com June 5th, 2014 post – These were questions that a Russian journalist asked the Anon group that found the Russian Internet Research Agency(IRA) of St. Petersburg and released the information currently used by Mueller and the MSM including the New York Times.

2. Journo:  Many consider you a “wiring”(wire service) for the discharge of Kremlin secrets. What do you say to that?

Shaltai Boltai: How many people, so many opinions. We do not intend to prove or deny it. We will be told for already laid out “stories” and those that we will lay out.

3. Journo:  What is your ultimate goal?

Shaltai Boltai:  We never concealed it. The goal is published in our blog and twitter – we create realities and give meanings to words. More – trying to change reality, create another reality. To launch certain events according to a certain scenario.

So, there it is. This informative post is a confession by the original source made directly after posting information about the Russian Internet Research Agency for over one month in May 2014.

If the information that Mueller used in his indictment was true, it would still have to be thrown out of a court of law because of the source. In the US, a police officer can’t lie to a judge or grand jury about probable cause to get a search or arrest warrant and expect anything he found to be admissible in court. Special Prosecutor Mueller can’t either. He cannot cite information that :

  • Was purported to be hacked and was obtained illegally if that were true
  • Cannot use information where the source states the information was manufactured to create new realities, in this case political realities.
  • Fake emails do not constitute evidence. None of the MSM stories even provide him with an inch of cover.
  • He doesn’t get a free pass today.

Let’s step back and look at how this developed. The second point that deserves special attention from Robert Mueller’s investigative team is the “Russians” shown through the hacked documents don’t seem to speak Russian or English well. It’s kind of like Mr. Bean does James Bond. It’s funny and at the same time absurd because it could never work.

The Russian language mistakes are grammar school stuff like you’d expect from a foreigner. They consist of basic spelling, gender confusion, and other simple grammatical errors that won’t be found in communications from law firms or multimillion dollar businesses.

This is important because according to Mueller the IRA (Internet Research Agency) is supposed to be composed of handpicked professional journalists, information war specialists, attorneys, and business people. These are supposed to be educated people. After all, they got past 19 Intel agencies right?

The hackers material almost conclusively shows that the Concord communications shown below were from people that use Russian as a 2nd language. I will post a link and show you how to search the blog easily. If they take the blog down, I saved it on the Wayback machine. It is entirely searchable and it is saved for posterity.

Next up, looking at the basic technical information. The proofs were posted by the hacker before anyone was looking for them, so that’s pretty bad. They seem very juvenile.

According to Paul Craig Roberts, “Mueller claims to have emails from some of the 13 Russians. If the emails are genuine, they sound like a few kids pretending to friends that they are doing big things. One of the emails brags that the FBI got after them so they got busy covering up their tracks.”

And Rollingstone Magazine wrote “All 13 individuals are named in the indictment, including Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who is the man behind the Internet Research Agency, the so-called “troll factory” located in St. Petersburg, Russia… Prigozhin, who is otherwise known as “Vladimir Putin’s chef,” operates a catering company and a related consulting firm, Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting LLC, both of which participated in the 2016 U.S. election conspiracy and both of which were also indicted by Mueller.

Prigozhin is supposed to be at the center of this. If you know anything about well-heeled Slavic Oligarchs, or just fat cats in general, regardless of who they are, they take a lot of pride in the look of their organizations.

This is where the source information gets interesting.

concord at gmail -b0ltai.files.wordpress.com-2018.02.19-02-56-23

The email is supposed to address Roman Kovalev at Prigozhin’s Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting LLC. Do you see the problem?

All the pieces of correspondence share the same traits. Either Ole’Yevgeniv (Prigozhin) is the cheapest Oligarch on the planet and uses gmail and yandex for company correspondence – or it is a fake email. If the emails are faked, what need is there to go on trying to convince you further? We’ve already crossed the endzone and scored.

The image below shows what real authenticated Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting LLC contact information looks like. Can you see the difference right away? If you were spending $1 Million + on a project every month, wouldn’t you give your project management something a little more secure than gmail and maybe just a touch snazzier?

concord email-www.concord-catering.ru.jpg.jpg

There are no gmail addresses here. If we look at another image we can get down to how elite these trolls were very quickly.

troll2-mail.google.com-2018.02.21-02-44-26

I clicked on the image at the hackers blog and if you look at the link on top, the name of the image appears – “troll.jpg”. By itself it means nothing. But we’ve already found out what’s going on. When you look at the communication, it is poorly formed instructions to post videos and comment.

How good is the supposed Information Operation unit of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg?

According to Mueller’s hackers, they were bad. No, beyond bad, they were barely literate in English, bad. They probably had a hard time getting directions to Starbucks, bad. Yes, I mean bad.

From the hackers in June, 2014: “Igor Osadchy is the head of the “external department” of the AII (Internet Research Agency, also known as the “trolley factory in Olgino”), that is, the very Prigozhin trolls working in bad English on foreign sites and flooding their “sincere” opinion forums and comments foreign media.”

If this is the source Mueller is using, it’s not just tainted information, it’s information that is tainting you. Look at how this foreign information operation is playing out across American media and dividing society. The following shows these posts are from the hackers.

wiess mueller troll farms 2014.jpg

According to the Washington Post, the other staff mentioned are merely incidental. I mean, it seems like they put down all the names they could get. Some were people that worked there in 2014, but most of these guys didn’t work for the troll factory for a long time. They didn’t even work for the troll factory during the elections.

Wikipedia also tells us that “The extent to which these Russians tried to influence public opinion using social media became widely known after a June 2014 BuzzFeed article greatly expanded on government documents published by hackers earlier that year.”

Adrian Chen’s non-article at the New York Times identifies the above as the source that Robert Mueller would eventually use. The hacking group using the Anonymous name isn’t even part of Anonymous.

At this point I can sit and list every article, publication, and journalist that has been taken in by this information operation, but what would be the point.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The Boston Globe’s Hit Piece on the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy

By Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain | June 4, 2018

The counterattack on those, including Senator Robert Kennedy’s children, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, claiming that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving at least a second gunman, has commenced. The Boston Globe, the traditional hometown newspaper of the Kennedy family, published a clearly misleading piece on May 31, 2018 by Nik DeCosta-Klipa, with the curiously long and loaded title “Bobby Kennedy’s son thinks he was killed by a second shooter. Is there anything to it?  Or has RFK, Jr. “launched a whole new generation of conspiracy nuts 50 years later.”

Whether DeCosta-Klipa was acting on orders from above to produce such a specious piece or is ignorant of the fundamental research in a case that shouts out conspiracy is a question I cannot answer, although based on his go-to “expert” in his article – Daniel Moldea, whose contradictory disinformation on the case is well known to serious researchers – I would guess the former to be correct.

Let me begin with the title, which is marvelously propagandistic and sets the naïve reader’s mind on the intended trajectory. RFK Jr.’s recent claim in The Washington Post of a second shooter and his call therefore for a re-investigation (a redundancy since no genuine official investigation was done; it was a cover-up from the start) is followed by a question: Is there anything to it? This is followed by a headlined quote from Moldea, repeating the CIA created meme about conspiracy nuts: Or has RFK Jr “launched a whole new generation of conspiracy nuts 50 years later.” A question mark for RFK, Jr., while Moldea is allowed an assertion in the title that is not followed by a question mark. Language is the key to effective propaganda, including punctuation.  It is a very subtle art, at which our mainstream corporate media are adept.

But if you think I am being picky, let me explain further.

DeCosta-Klipa begins by asserting that “conspiracy theories concerning President John F. Kennedy’s death may be most widely circulated.” Thus the reader is led into this article with the insinuation that of course Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and anyone who questions that is a conspiracy nut. So what about RFK’s murder?

As the night follows day, we meet conspiracy nuts here too, courtesy of DeCosta-Klipa who allows Moldea a free hand to spout nonsense. A person not familiar with the research done on this case by the great researcher Lisa Pease and others would assume that Moldea was the expert par excellence on RFK’s assassination, when nothing could be further from the truth. James DiEugenio, Pease’s colleague and an equally brilliant researcher, has surgically dismembered Moldea’s work on the case.

So why has DeCosta-Klipa shined the spotlight on Moldea and given him so much space?

It is unlikely that he has read Moldea’s 1995 book, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, a book about which DiEugenio rightly says: its “every major tenet is highly suspect, whose sourcing is not explicit, whose fairness is, to say the least, one-sided, whose completeness is just not there, whose use of witnesses-like Kaiser and McCowan-is rather lenient…. it is a ‘bookshelf’ book that has no intellectual content or substance.” He suggests it was commissioned by the government forces responsible for RFK’s death and the ongoing cover-up.

Moldea is allowed full leeway to rant:

To claim absurdly that the LAPD messed up and was not involved in the sinister plot and cover-up.

To rip Robert Kennedy Jr. with the words “What Bobby Kennedy Jr. has done, he’s launched a whole new generation of conspiracy nuts who are going to believe that Sirhan didn’t do it and somebody else did.”

To utter the word conspiracy and conspiracy nuts constantly and to have that word repeated throughout by DeCosta-Klipa, as if he were Moldea’s echo. The word conspiracy is used nine times in a highly pejorative sense.

(The conspiracy label was created by the CIA in 1967 to besmirch the name and reputation of anyone questioning the assassination of President Kennedy. CIA agents and assets throughout the mass media were encouraged to use it constantly. Of course they have.)

To preposterously claim that all the eyewitnesses were wrong and that since the autopsy definitively showed Kennedy was shot from the rear at point blank range that he must have turned around so Sirhan, who was standing feet away to the front could shoot him in his back and head. To which, of course, DeCosta-Klipa has no reply, as if it weren’t ridiculous.

To falsely claim – lie – that Paul Schrade, an aide to the senator, who was walking behind him and was the first person shot, fell into RFK, pushing him toward Sirhan, when in fact Schrade fell backwards feet behind RFK.

To absurdly claim that the many bullet holes found in the door frames and wall weren’t bullet holes at all, but in DeCosta-Kipa’s words, paraphrasing Moldea, “were most likely the result of any number of kitchen carts banging into the wall.”

Don’t laugh; there’s more.

To claim that the man highly suspected of having shot Kennedy from the rear, the security guard Thane Eugene Cesar, is innocent since he told him so. But he doesn’t say that Cesar fled the country and is living somewhere in Asia under Moldea’s protection.

To claim the highly suspect police investigator of the shooting, DeWayne Wolfer, who also falsely asserts that no extra bullets were ever found, is a reliable source, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

And to top it off, DeCosta-Klipa grants Moldea the final words: “I think [RFK Jr.] has been misled, conned, and corrupted by the conspiracy crowd to believe this garbage that the man that murdered his father is innocent.”

The truth is the readers of The Boston Globe have been misled, conned, and corrupted by a classic piece of propaganda.

It is a disgrace.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Hating Russia Is a Full-Time Job

Neocons resurrect tribal memories to fan the flames

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • June 5, 2018

Having just returned from a trip to Russia, I am pleased to report that the Russian people and the officialdom that I encountered displayed none of the vitriol towards Americans that I half expected as a response to the vilifying of Moscow and all its works that pervades the U.S. media and Establishment. To be sure, many Russians I spoke with were quick to criticize the Trump Administration for its hot and cold performance vis-à-vis the bilateral ties to Moscow while also expressing mystification over why the relationship had gone south so quickly, but this anger over foreign policy did not necessarily translate into contempt for the American people and way of life that characterized the Soviet period. At least not yet.

Somewhat to my surprise, ordinary Russians were also quick to openly criticize President Vladimir Putin for his autocratic tendencies and his willingness to continue to tolerate corruption, but everyone I spoke to also conceded that he had generally acted constructively and had greatly improved life for ordinary people. Putin remains wildly popular.

One question that came up frequently was “Who is driving the hostility towards Russia?” I responded that the answer is not so simple and there are a number of constituencies that, for one reason or another, need a powerful enemy to justify policies that would otherwise be unsustainable. Defense contractors need a foe to justify their existence while congressmen need the contractors to fund their campaigns. The media needs a good fearmongering story to help sell itself and the public also is accustomed to having a world in which terrible threats lurk just below the horizon, thereby increasing support for government control of everyday life to keep everyone “safe.”

And then there are the neocons. As always, they are a distinct force for creative destruction, as they put it, certainly first in line with their hands out to get the funding of their no-expenses-spared foundations and think tanks, but also driven ideologically, which has made them the intellectual vanguard of the war party. They provide the palatable intellectual framework for America to take on the world, metaphorically speaking, and constitute the strike force that is always ready to appear on television talk shows or to be quoted in the media with an appropriate intelligent sounding one liner that can be used to justify the unthinkable. In return they are richly rewarded both with money and status.

The neocons believe in only two things. First, that the United States is the sole world superpower, given license by something like a Divine Entity to exercise global leadership by force if necessary. That has been translated to the public as “American exceptionalism.” Indeed, U.S. interventionism in practice has been by force majeure preferably as it leaves little room for debate or discussion. And the second neocon guiding principle is that everything possible must be done to protect and promote Israel. Absent these two beliefs, you do not have a neocon.

The founding fathers of neoconism were New York Jewish “intellectuals” who evolved (or devolved) from being bomb throwing Trotskyites to “conservatives,” a process they self-define as “idealism getting mugged by reality.” The only reality is that they have always been faux conservatives, embracing a number of aggressive foreign policy and national security positions while also privately endorsing the standard Jewish liberal line on social issues. Neocon fanaticism on the issues that they do promote also suggests that more that a little of the Trotskyism remains in their character, hence their tenacity and ability to slither between the Democratic and Republican parties while also appearing comfortably on disparate media outlets considered to be either liberal or conservative, i.e. on both Fox news and MSNBC programs featuring the likes of Rachel Maddow.

I have long believed that the core hatred of Russia comes from the neocons and is to a large extent tribal or, if you prefer, ethno-religious based. Why? Because if the neoconservatives were actually foreign policy realists there is no good reason to express any visceral dislike of Russia or its government. The allegations that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. are clearly a sham, just as are the tales of the alleged Russian poisoning of the Skripals in Winchester England and, most recently, the claimed assassination of journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kiev which turned out to be a false flag. Even the most cursory examination of the past decade’s developments in Georgia and Ukraine reveal that Russia was reacting to legitimate major security threats engineered by the United States with a little help from Israel and others. Russia has not since the Cold War ended threatened the United States and its ability to re-acquire its former Eastern European satellites is a fantasy. So why the hatred?

In fact, the neocons got along quite well with Russia when they and their overwhelmingly Jewish oligarchs and international commodity thieves cum financier friends were looting the resources of the old Soviet Union under the hapless Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s. Alarms about the alleged Russian threat only re-emerged in the neocon dominated media and think tanks when old fashioned nationalist Vladimir Putin took office and made it a principal goal of his government to turn off the money tap.

With the looting stopped by Putin, the neocons and friends no longer had any reason to play nice, so they used their considerable resources in the media and within the halls of power in places like Washington, London and Paris to turn on Moscow. And they also might have perceived that there was a worse threat looming. The Putin government appeared to be resurrecting what the neocons might perceive as pogrom plagued Holy Russia! Old churches razed by the Bolsheviks were being rebuilt and people were again going to mass and claiming belief in Jesus Christ. The former Red Square now hosts a Christmas market while the nearby tomb of Lenin is only open one morning in the week and attracts few visitors.

I would like to suggest that it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia. The fact is that much of Bolshevik state atheism was driven by the large overrepresentation of Jews in the party in its formative days. British journalist Robert Wilton’s meticulously researched 1920 study “The Last Days of the Romanovs” describes how David R. Francis, United States ambassador in Russia, warned in a January 1918 message to Washington that “The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.”

Dutch Ambassador William Oudendyke echoed that sentiment, writing that “Unless Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things.”

Russia’s greatest twentieth century writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, feted in the west for his staunch resistance to Soviet authoritarianism, suddenly found himself friendless by the media and publishing world when he wrote “Two Centuries Together: A Russo-Jewish History to 1972”, recounting some of the dark side of the Russian-Jewish experience. In particular, Solzhenitsyn cited the significant overrepresentation of Russian Jews both as Bolsheviks and, prior to that time, as serf-owners.

Jews notably played a particularly disproportionate role in the Soviet secret police, which began as the Cheka and eventually became the KGB. Jewish historian Leonard Schapiro noted how “Anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka “stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with, and possibly shot by, a Jewish investigator.” In Ukraine, “Jews made up nearly eighty percent of the rank-and-file Cheka agents.”

In light of all this it should surprise no one that the new Russian government pf 1918 issued a decree a few months after taking power making anti-Semitism a crime in Russia. The Communist regime became the world’s first to criminally punish any anti-Jewish sentiment.

Wilton used official Russian government documents to identify the make-up of the Bolshevik regime in 1917-9. The 62 members of the Central Committee included 41 Jews while the Extraordinary Cheka Commission Cheka of Moscow’s 36 members included 23 Jews. The 22 strong Council of the People’s Commissars numbered had 17 Jews. According to data furnished by the Soviet authorities, out of the 556 most important functionaries of the Bolshevik state in 1918-1919 there were: 17 Russians, two Ukrainians, eleven Armenians, 35 Latvians, 15 Germans, one Hungarian, ten Georgians, three Poles, three Finns, one Czech and 458 Jews.

In 1918-9, effective Russian governmental power rested in the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party. In 1918 this body had twelve members, of whom nine were of Jewish origin, and three were Russians. The nine Jews were: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Larine, Uritsky, Volodarski, Kamenev, Smidovich, Yankel, and Steklov. The three Russians were: Lenin, Krylenko, and Lunacharsky.

The Communist diaspora in Europe and America was also largely Jewish, including the cabal of founders of neoconservativism in New York City. The United States Communist Party was from the start predominantly Jewish. It was in the 1930s headed by Jew Earl Browder, grandfather of the current snake oil salesman Bill Browder, who has been sanctimoniously proclaiming his desire to punish Vladimir Putin for various alleged high crimes. Browder is a complete hypocrite who has fabricated and sold to Congress a largely phony and self-serving narrative relating to Russian corruption. He is also not surprisingly a neocon media darling in the U.S. It has been more than plausibly claimed that Browder was a principal looter of Russia’s resources in the 1990s and Russian courts have convicted him of tax evasion among other crimes.

The undeniable historical affinity of Jews for the Bolshevik brand of communism coupled with the Jewishness of the so-called oligarchs rather suggests that the hatred of a Russia that has turned its back on those particular aspects of Jewish heritage might be at least part of what drives some neocons. Just as in the case of Syria which the neocons, bowing to Israel’s interests, prefer to see in chaos, some might long for a return to the good old days of looting by mostly Jewish foreign interests, as under Yeltsin, or even better for the heady days of 1918-9 Bolshevism when Jews ruled all of Russia.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 2 Comments

Iran to boost production of uranium enrichment material – state atomic agency

RT | June 5, 2018

Iran has begun preliminary work on infrastructure for advanced centrifuges, the country’s Atomic Energy Organization has confirmed. The announcement comes after Tehran said it would revamp its uranium enrichment program.

The infrastructure project is being carried out at a facility in Natanz. Iran also plans to boost production of UF6, a gas needed to produce fuel for nuclear reactors and weapons. But the country’s nuclear activities will remain within the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal, Ali Akbar Salehi, the director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), has stated.

A spokesman for the organization said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees Iran’s compliance with the 2015 JCPOA deal, will be notified of Iran’s activities on Tuesday.

“In a letter that will be handed over to the International Atomic Energy Agency … Iran will announce that the process of increasing the capacity to produce … UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) … will start on Tuesday,” he said.

The spokesman said it was being done on the orders of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in a speech on Monday that AEOI must promptly prepare to start uranium enrichment “up to a level of 190,000 SWU for the time being within the framework of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).”

SWU or “separative work unit” is a standard measure of the effort needed to separate isotopes of uranium during an enrichment process. 1 SWU equals 1 kg of such effort.

Previously, Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency estimated that its enrichment capacity will reach 190,000 SWUs by the 15th year after the deal comes into effect. For that purpose, Iran planned to gradually increase its number of centrifuges, while staying within the scope of the deal.

Speaking to ISNA, Kamalvandi stressed that, by boosting its nuclear program, Iran does not seek to develop nuclear weapons. “Our goals are not to achieve a nuclear weapon, and it’s against our religious stance.”

“The message of our actions is that we will maintain our capacity for activation at a high level, and if we agreed to limit it now, it is because the parties must adhere to their commitments,” he said.

After the US exit from the deal on May 8, other parties to the landmark agreement, including France, the UK, and Germany vowed to abide by the deal and keep it intact, despite the US withdrawal. However, European nations followed the lead of Washington in demanding that Iran’s missile program and its regional posture must be a part of any future negotiations for a post-deal security framework. Iran has vehemently refused to tie its ballistic missile program, which has not been a part of the original agreement, to the deal and has called on Europe to compensate it for the impact that the reimposed US sanctions will have on its economy. On Monday, Khamenei said Europe should not expect Teheran to stay in the deal if it does nothing to shield it from the brunt of punitive measures coming its way.

“It seems from what they say that some European governments expect the Iranian nation to both put up with sanctions and give up its nuclear activities and continue to observe limitations [on its nuclear program]. I tell those governments that this bad dream will never come true,” he said.

He again ruled out that Iran might agree to curtail its ballistic missile development, saying that it’s wishful thinking by Europe if it believes otherwise.

“I am telling the Europeans, ‘Limiting our missile work is a dream that will never come true,” Khamenei stressed.

One of the major points of Iran’s ultimatum to Europe is that it must offset the damage inflicted on its energy industry by buying Iranian oil and protecting trade with the Islamic Republic by providing banking guarantees.

Last week, a senior adviser to Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, told Iranian media that the continuation of the talks would depend on Europe’s readiness to meet these demands.

“We will preserve Iran’s regional and missile power to kill US with envy,” he added.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

Israel intelligence minister proposes ‘military coalition’ against Iran

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Press TV – June 5, 2018

Israel has proposed that “a military coalition” be formed against Iran in case Tehran pursues “military-grade” uranium enrichment, suggesting that the military force would comprise of the Israeli regime, the US, the Western states and their Arab allies.

Speaking to media on Tuesday, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz claimed that Iran had once been running an “unsupervised” enrichment scheme with the potential of arming the country with nuclear weapons.

The allies will need to issue a statement against the Islamic Republic “if the Iranians don’t surrender now, and try to return,” he said, adding that the statement would be threatening Iranians that “a military coalition will be formed against them.”

“There should be a clear statement by the president of the United States and all of the Western coalition” if Iran returns to enriching “military-grade” uranium, the minister said. “The Arabs and Israel surely would be there too,” he added.

Washington and Tel Aviv, and to a lesser extent their Western and Arab partners, have claimed that Tehran’s nuclear energy program harbors military aspects.

Iran has strictly and in all circumstances denied pursuing any military ambitions through its nuclear work.

The country asserts that under a fatwa (religious decree) issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, its long-established policy is to oppose the acquisition, production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons.

In December 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board voted overwhelmingly in favor of a draft resolution, which closed the so-called possible military dimensions (PMD) case in Iran’s nuclear program.

The vote brought an end to a 12-year investigation into the “past and present issues” regarding Iran’s nuclear activities, which the United Nations nuclear watchdog had been probing under pressure from the Israeli regime, the US and their allies.

The vote came after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries signed a nuclear agreement in 2015.

The US, however, withdrew from the accord last month, emboldening Israel in its efforts to try to kill the deal and rally more support for its anti-Iran campaign.

Despite Tel Aviv and Washington’s hostile endeavors, European states have vowed to keep respecting the deal and try their utmost to preserve it.

The Israeli minister’s comments come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on a tour of Europe to persuade European leaders to follow the US and ditch the Iran deal.

This is while Iran is currently in talks with the other signatories on the future of the deal. Tehran has said it will stay in the JCPOA if the Europeans give guarantees that a deal without the US would still protect the Iranian interests.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Senate Democrats threaten to block Trump-North Korea deal

Press TV – June 5, 2018

US Democrats have warned President Donald Trump that they will block any deal with North Korea that does not guarantee a “verifiable” dismantlement of the country’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

In a letter to Trump on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Bob Menendez said their party was not going to support a deal to ease sanctions on North Korea if the White House failed to meet their conditions.

“Sanctions relief by the US and our allies should be dependent on dismantlement and removal of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs,” the two Democrats wrote. “Any deal that explicitly or implicitly gives North Korea sanctions relief for anything other than the verifiable performance of its obligations to dismantle its nuclear and missile arsenal is a bad deal.”

An acceptable deal in Schumer and Menendez’s view had to ensure a “complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea,” an end to Pyongyang’s ballistic missile tests, and “robust compliance inspections.”

Pointing to the important role that Congress had in enacting a sanctions relief, the opposition leaders warned that they would opt for “tougher sanctions and oversight” if they thought the Republican head of state was moving in the wrong direction.

“If we think the president is veering off course, we won’t hesitate to move, but let’s see where he’s headed,” Schumer told reporters later in the day.

The letter came days ahead of a highly-anticipated summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12.

Trump called of the meeting a short while back, after a brief war of words broke out between the two countries over the terms of a possible deal.

“Now that the meeting will proceed as planned, we want to make sure the president’s desire for a deal with North Korea doesn’t saddle us… with a bad deal,” Schumer said. “The president needs to be willing to walk away from the table if there isn’t a good deal to be had.”

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment