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Ocasio-Cortez to Constituents on Bolivian Coup: Drop Dead

By Jacob Levich | CounterPunch | February 14, 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the celebrity who moonlights as my Congressional representative, has repeatedly claimed to speak for “ordinary people,” but she refuses listen to them,  even if they are constituents.

In late November, shortly after the US-backed military coup that unseated the legitimate president of Bolivia, I together with my life companion requested a meeting with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, whose local offices are located just a short walk from our Jackson Heights apartment building. Working on behalf of a group of anti-imperialists opposing the fascist junta, we hoped to persuade her of the need to act quickly to thwart the coup and defend the lives and rights of the Bolivian people.

Although we never got past the reception desk, we were permitted to present a petition signed by leading academics and anti-imperialist organizers on behalf of the people of Bolivia. We provided all personal data and contact info requested by the office. We were promised that we would be contacted promptly to discuss scheduling a meeting.

We were not contacted. For weeks. After pressing the issue, always taking care to remain courteous and respectful of process, we were subjected to a galling and contemptuous bureaucratic runaround that sometimes felt like applying to – and being rejected by – an exclusive private school.

This three-month process involved repeated visits to her office, where our reception ranged from chilly to downright intimidating, endless emails and telephone calls, bureaucratic excuses and dissimulations, and eventually, after much persistence on our part, a half-hour vetting via conference call by a Washington staffer.

The result? As we say in Queens, bubkes.

By contrast, a group of imperialist sympathizers who had been promoting the coup for months were granted instant access. On November 16, four days after the military coup that destroyed Bolivian democracy, Ocasio-Cortez met with a group of pro-Áñez, pro-Camacho activists led by one Ana Carola Traverso. Traverso’s connections to the Bolivian coup plotters have been extensively documented online.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez symbolically embraced the coup by posing for a photo with this group as they brandished the tricolor Bolivian flag, which during that period had become a signal of support for the golpistas (as opposed to the Wiphala flag, which symbolized popular resistance to the takeover). She told them that she supports their “democratic grassroots movement” and offered them “direct lines of communication.”

In sum, a gang of coup supporters, not constituents, were granted instant access, a photo op and promises of ongoing support. Actual constituents, opposing the coup, were shown the door.

Our reception by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was radically different from that I received from her predecessor, Joe Crowley. When, in 2004, I requested a meeting on behalf of the Queens Antiwar Coalition, we were granted prompt and respectful access to the Congressman. We did not have high hopes of changing his vote on the Iraq war, but we felt it was important that he hear from his constituents.

So, apparently, did he. We were greeted warmly in his rather funky local office – a striking contrast with AOC’s soulless corporate-style digs, where underlings refer to her as “the Boss”  – and were encouraged to speak our piece. Crowley never pretended to be an opponent of US imperialism, but he gave us a respectful hearing, stated his position, and engaged in what felt like meaningful discussion of the war. At a minimum, as Twitter’s bluecheck pundits would say, we felt “seen.”

AOC, by contrast, has no time for people who cannot help her to burnish her brand as she prepares to run for higher office. As a local staffer (who declined to introduce himself) proudly informed us: “She refuses 99 percent of meeting requests from constituents.”

Meanwhile, she happily clears her schedule for interviews about her makeup routine, canned videos in which she postures as a fearless progressive, and closed-door meetings with regime-change sympathizers.

But she will not make time for residents of her district. So much for “ordinary people.”

February 21, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

Worse than we thought

Climate Discussion Nexus | February 19, 2020

NBC runs a strange variant on the “it’s even worse than the settled science thought” climate story: “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up — but not this soon”. Except they didn’t predict ocean currents would speed up, they said the opposite. For years climate change models and alarmists predicted ocean currents would slow down. Then it sped up and that too was proof of climate change. In every other branch of science predictions are required to come before observed events, and they’re not supposed to predict the opposite of what happens. And if they do, it’s not supposed to be used as proof of the theory.

In fact there’s a lot less to this story than meets the headline, as so often. (For instance the ones howling about accelerating sea level rise of about 0.04 mm when the range of uncertainty is 5 mm.) Starting with how nobody knows what the ocean’s currents are doing. It’s not as though climate modelers go forth and measure stuff. Instead, David Whitehouse points out on the Global Warming Policy Forum, they find some proxies, fill in massive gaps with computer models, put the resulting data-like object into other computer models and go “Aha, exactly as we predicted, except for the speed, timing and direction of the change.”

Actually to be fair this study didn’t even say that much. The researchers are totally on board with man-made global warming, kicking off their introduction with “Earth has experienced rapid warming for decades, driven by increased emissions of greenhouse gases”. But when it comes to these pesky, complex ocean currents, the lead author said bluntly “So far observations haven’t shown a trend”.

So more research is needed. And, as NBC quotes a completely unbiased Environmental Defense Fund scientist not involved with this project as adding, more funding for research. For us. But the study’s model does say that in theory, if we knew a lot more than we do and accepted certain assumptions, we’d expect the currents to speed up whereas on other assumptions we’d expect the opposite unless we didn’t.

Even the NBC story eventually stumbles into the dark, admitting that “The puzzling discovery, detailed in a study published last week in the journal Science Advances, highlights that climate change could have wide-ranging effects that are unexpected or severely understudied.” And here we thought the science was “settled”.

Oh wait. It is. NBC also says “The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.” But none overestimate it, because it’s always worse than it is. “Warmer water will generate hurricanes and extreme weather like that, so there are definitely implications from our work,” said one of the scientists, while an outside observer said “if the ocean system changes significantly, it could directly threaten life on Earth.”

So yes, we are all going to die. QED.

February 21, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

The UN’s Planet Saving Delusion

The UN couldn’t help Haiti recover from an earthquake. But it’s gonna rescue the planet.

This graphic accompanies the UNESCO editorial. Read it online here; download it here
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | February 19, 2020

UNESCO is supposed to be about cultural preservation. Toward the end of last year, its in-house magazine nevertheless published a special issue on climate change. The official editorial employs the usual cliches. Catastrophic consequences. The “greatest global challenge of our times.” Blah, blah.

Hilariously, this editorial implies that, without a UN plan, the planet simply won’t survive. Earth to UNESCO: could we spend five minutes talking about how the UN has failed – tragically and comprehensively – to save Haiti?

That nation has less than 12 million people. It’s slightly smaller than the US state of Maryland. Because it comprises half of an island, its borders are well-defined. The UN has been a significant presence there since 2004, yet Haiti remains a basket case.

After a devastating earthquake struck in 2010, rebuilding was a huge job at which the UN was spectacularly inept. But that isn’t the half of it. UN peacekeepers then infected the already traumatized local population with cholera.

The peacekeepers were from Nepal, which had just experienced a cholera outbreak. The UN took no steps to ensure its personnel weren’t carrying the disease. Nor did it establish proper sanitation at their encampment. Untreated sewage got dumped into the country’s most important river, contaminating water that was used for drinking, cooking, and bathing.

A news report from Haiti, October 2010:

This triggered the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, an epidemic Haitian doctors were ill-equipped to combat since the disease had never been recorded there before.

The 10,000 deaths and decade of sickness that followed is a UN-caused calamity. But when Ban Ki-moon finally got around to apologizing for how the situation had been handled, six years after the epidemic began, he failed to take full responsibility. The UN, you see, is protected by diplomatic immunity. There’s a permanent get-of-jail-free-card in its back pocket. It can never be held truly accountable for the harm it inflicts.

Anyone who imagines the UN is capable of saving the entire planet needs to take a few days out of their life to read two books. The first is written by Jonathan Katz, the Associated Press journalist stationed in Haiti when the earthquake occurred. It’s titled: The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster.

The other is called Deadly River: Cholera and Cover-up in Post-Earthquake Haiti. It tells the story of Renaud Piarroux, a French physician who was called in to investigate. Written by his medical colleague, Ralph Frerichs, it shows the UN failing one moral test after another.

Rather than receiving cooperation and assistance, Piarroux, who had led efforts to stamp out cholera elsewhere, had to battle the UN itself.

It is standard procedure in such situations to identify the source of an outbreak as quickly as possible. In this instance, officials at several UN bodies – including the World Health Organization (WHO) – insisted there were more important considerations than assigning blame. Frerichs writes:

there was an active effort to suppress any search for the origin. [p. 34]

all international officials, with no exceptions, adopted the same position, exonerating [UN] soldiers. [p.66]

The [UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] maps continued to falsify where cholera began… [p. 70]

For years the UN, aided and abetted by certain prominent experts, tried to link the outbreak to climate change:

it became apparent that there was an active effort to obfuscate the role of the Nepalese UN peacekeepers, aided by those who believed that cholera originates from climatic or environmental changes… [p 108]

There was not a single piece of evidence to support the environmental hypothesis that [cholera] had been lying dormant and then…had been upset by the January 2010 earthquake. The outbreak had occurred nine months after the earthquake! [p. 137]

On January 6, the members of the ‘independent’ UN panel were announced… The panel members were… firmly tied to the environmental theory. [pp. 160-161]

At the end of its investigation, even the UN panel had to dismiss the environmental hypothesis… [p. 182]

Overall, the UN report was a whitewash that chose not to talk about the peacekeepers, yet criticized the victims. Here are a few more quotes from the book:

How could the supposedly independent UN panel have failed to identify the humans responsible for the… outbreak? [p. 189]

the panel did not hesitate to assign some blame to Haitians and to their local public health environment. [p. 190]

Details on the source [of the cholera] were also omitted from [a WHO publication] when the scientific facts were clearly known…WHO regulations have long stipulated that ‘all information available on the origin of infection’ must be reported. [p. 194]

The UN is a massive bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are never held accountable. They’re staffed by careerists who hop from assignment to assignment, avoiding the consequences of the decisions they make about other people’s lives.

When something goes wrong, the buck gets passed here, there, and everywhere. There’s little incentive for UN personnel to acknowledge their mistakes, never mind learn from them.

The world is comprised of doers and talkers. Haiti shows us that UN personnel are good at talking and writing reports. But they’re pathetic at getting anything done in the real world.

At ground zero of a terrible natural disaster, UN personnel made things worse rather than better. They then wasted precious time denying, stonewalling, and covering up the harm they’d inflicted.

February 21, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Deception | , | 1 Comment

What’s Really Behind Rohrbacher’s ‘Assange Pardon’ Story?

By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | February 20, 2020

Just as Roger Stone’s sentencing was getting underway this afternoon, another story began drifting out into the media sphere – another potential spanner in the works just in time for part one of Julian Assange’s US extradition hearing which is due to commence this Monday.

According to a revelation aired during a recent scheduled case hearing on Wednesday by a member of Assange’s defence team, Edward Fitzgerald QC, Assange was informally offered some kind of pardon deal by a US representative during the first year of the Trump Administration. Fitzgerald was reading from a statement by Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, reportedly saying:

“Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

This statement is referring to former US Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) who says he visited Assange as part of Rohrbacher’s own independent ‘fact finding mission’ at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, near  the beginning of the Mueller Investigation.

Before we continue and unravel what has been said and by whom, there are three key aspects of this latest news to consider.

The first and most importantly – is the media spin aspect. Given that this is both a highly-charged partisan, as well as geopolitical case, and that we are just days away from the start of Assange’s historic extradition hearing, there are powerful forces, be they state, partisan or media – who will try and spin this and other ‘bombshells’ in a way which suits their political agenda. It also goes without saying that there are agents of influence within mainstream media organizations who are both willing and able to manipulate, twist, distort or fabricate any aspect of a story like this in order to further the interests of the two primary government stakeholders in this case, the United States and United Kingdom. This has already been demonstrated time and time again with the Assange story, most notably by The Guardian newspaper who completely fabricated at least one headline story by Luke Harding and Danny Collyns claiming that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The Guardian then followed this fake news story up with a sequel in which they used Harding’s Manafort story to help bolster another bogus claim that an ally of Nigel Farage was attempting to obtain emails from WikiLeaks. Bottom line: if there is any opportunity to advance a Trump-Russia or RussiaGate narrative, there are mainstream journalists and editors ready to publish or say anything, even if it’s a complete lie.

The second thing to consider is how this latest news will factor into Julian Assange’s extradition hearing next week.

And thirdly, whether or not the Dana Rohrbacher story will ultimately help, or hurt the real protagonist in this case, Julian Assange.

Most certainly, the mainstream media have distorted this story from the word go, mostly to advance anti-Trump and anti-Russian narratives. We’ll look at two reports, one from the Daily Beast, and the other from the UK’s Independent.

The Daily Beast story written by Nico Hines carries an over-the-top headline, “Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims”. Of course, this isn’t actually what the lawyer said. The headline doesn’t actually correspond with the claims made below in the article. Hine’s own article does not stipulate that Trump himself made such an offer to Assange. Hine then repeats the same lie in the sub-header, saying that Rohrbacher “had brought the message to London from Trump.” In addition to this, the headline erroneously asserts that Assange is also orchestrating a cover-up. No doubt the Daily Beast’s management and data analytics team knows that a large percentage of online readers, especially those seeing content via social media, only skim the headline of a post and do not read the body of the article (content engineers need to know this data because it is how they place and bill for advertising space). In addition to this, according to a statement made by former Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, the former Congressman made a proposition to Assange that if the WikiLeaks founder was prepared to give proof of who provided the DNC and related email leaks, Rohrbacher would do his best to lobby the President for a pardon. With his gratuitous headline, stamped with “Quid Pro Quo” in red lettering right below it, Hines was attempting to re-purpose the UkraineGate-Impeachment accusation of Trump’s abuse of power in asking the Ukrainian President Zelensky for an illicit ‘Quid Pro Quo’ favor, thus engaging in yet another under-the-table dodgy deal.

Above all, this story is being crafted to look as if Trump was in league with Assange to try and cover-up any Russian involvement in the DNC Leaks and the 2016 Election – leaving the reader to assume that there was Russian involvement. This story is complete spin and clickbait by the Daily Beast. In classic propaganda style, the author also uses this opportunity to reinforce the usual laundry list of unproven RussiaGate narrative talking points, stating a series of evidence-free assertions and falsehoods as if they were iron-clad proven facts (now standard operating procedure for most US mainstream outlets):

“Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.”

“WikiLeaks posted the stolen DNC emails after they were hacked by Russian operatives.”

This is followed by a cheap, ad hominem smear against Rohrbacher:

“Rohrabacher, who was known as Putin’s favorite congressman.”


Like The Guardian, formerly a respectable newspaper, the UK’s Independent has become a formidable online propaganda outlet. It’s headline takes the Daily Beast spin even further, adding ‘Russian election interference’ for good measure: “Trump offered to pardon Assange if he covered up Russian interference in US election, court told”. Of course, this is not what the court was told, but the truth doesn’t seem to be a priority for these mainstream outlets. It repeats most of the lies woven through the Daily Beast article, and then builds a partisan angle on top of the initial lie, making reference to the 2020 US election:

“… could have profound consequences for Mr Trump’s re-election effort if proven true.”

Note also the use of the cheap throwaway propaganda phrase, “if proven true” – which more often than not denotes a fake allegation, and is proof of deceptive intent, or a pre-existing agenda or bias by the author. A similar election smear here:

“It’s another indication that Trump’s assault on the rule of law isn’t new; it’s been ongoing throughout his term. And imagine just how much we don’t yet know.”

The propaganda housekeeping continues, advancing the official conspiracy theory that the DNC and Clinton emails were hacked, when there is still no proof to validate this claim, citing a likely partisan source, Obama CIA official Ned Price:

“A series of emails embarrassing for the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks…”

More of the same, reinforcing unproven, untested accusations tabled by Mueller probe:

The Mueller investigation, published in April, found Russian GRU agents hacked Ms Clinton’s private server for the first time just hours after Mr Trump’s public request for Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing”.

(NOTE: DOJ indictments of ‘GRU hackers’ have shown no proof, FBI did not forensically inspect DNC servers, only showed redacted IT reports from the private firm Crowdsrike, and posited an unproven theory that Russian GRU agents ran online cut-outs like Guccifer 2.0)

Needless to say, when it comes to stories like this, most mainstream media outlets are not fit for purpose, and most likely co-opted by some partisan interests, or worse, by an intelligence agency. History is replete with examples of this.

The second consideration is: how will this latest revelation effect Julian Assange’s extradition hearing next week? If you can filter out all of the media and partisan spin, you can see that this new information was introduced by the defense for a reason which may have less to do with Trump and Russia, and more to do with substantiating a complaint made by the defense that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S. because Washington’s case against him is in fact politically motivated. In this case, as a serving member of Congressman, Rohrbacher’s meeting with Assange and solicitation of a deal automatically proves that there was direct US political involvement in advance of the Department of Justice’s 18 superceding indictments of Assange served this past summer. In addition to this, the defense has proof of a CIA-led operation which spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which included surveillance of his discussions with his attorneys. Taken together, these two pieces of evidence could be crucial in the defense’s effort to have the US extradition request overturned on the basis that the US effort is entirely politically motivated and therefore in violation the extradition treaty between the two countries.

WikiLeaks tweeted out today that this Rohrbacher story will come into play on Tuesday’s session of the hearing.

WikiLeaks also points out the issue of the timeline of events with this story – that the Rohrbacher meeting took place long after Assange had publicly stated that his source for the DNC leaks was not a sate actor.

In addition to this, former UK Ambassador and friend of Assange, Craig Murray, has also declared publicly ( and confidently) on numerous occasions that the source was not Russia, but from ‘Washington DC circles’. From Sputnik News :

In December 2016 Murray told Radio Sputnik that the DNC Leaks had “absolutely nothing to do with Russia”. He said that he discovered the source while attending a whistleblowing conference in the US and stressed that it came from “official circles in Washington DC”.

Lastly, there is the question of whether or not the Dana Rohrbacher story will help, or hurt the credibility of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

As I have stated a number of times previously, the key to the DOJ case against Assange lies in the language in which they have reframed Assange and WikiLeaks from being a journalist and a press outlet, and instead labeled him as a ‘cyber terrorist and Russian asset’, and a ‘hostile non-state foreign intelligence service’, respectively. This reframing will also allow the US to strip Assange and WikiLeaks of any first Amendment protections upon arrival in the US, as well as justify Special Administrative Measures, which places Assange essentially in the same category as an enemy combatant or terrorist. One way to make this reframing exercise more credible is by attacking the credibility of both Assange and WikiLeaks, to portray them as not acting like ‘conventional journalistic outlets,’ simply to demonstrate that Assange and WikiLeaks are cavalier or careless in keeping to their journalistic principles. This is where the claims made by Dana Rohrbacher might be used to undermine Julian Assange’s insistence that WikiLeaks protects their sources at all costs. The insinuation by Rohrbacher – which has now cascaded through the world’s media – is that Assange was willing to sell-out his principles by divulging to Washington who leaked the DNC emails in order to save his own skin in the form of a pardon from President Trump.

In Rohrbacker’s own words:

“Upon my return, I spoke briefly with Gen. Kelly. I told him that Julian Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon.”

In his statement posted on Feb. 20, 2020, Rohrbacher was careful not to state explicitly that Assange had told him “Yes” and agreed to give up his source in exchange for a Presidential pardon – it was only inferred in Rohrbacher’s above quote, “I told him that Julian Assange would provide information…” – but he does not specify what exactly that information would be: a source, contextual information, deductive information, ie. who it wasn’t, or some other forensic evidence which would rule out a Russian state actor. It’s hard to know at this point, but that didn’t stop the mainstream media from colonizing that vacuum of information with the usual bevy of speculation, spin and fake news which we demonstrated earlier in this article. But the general impression in all of the reporting and from the Congressman himself, is that Assange had told Rohrbacher he would indeed give up his source in exchange for a pardon. This does not square with many vehement statements made by Assange about maintaining the integrity of WikiLeaks’ sources.

Who would really expect Assange to have have suffered this ten-year long ordeal – only to suddenly trust an emissary of the United States government to keep his promise to make good on some informal, and highly uncertain promise of freedom?

It’s also worth noting here that this same narrative mirrors a story which has been circulating somewhat under the radar for months, about a former FOX News contributor named Ellen Ratner (late brother Michael Ratner had been a U.S. lawyer for WikiLeaks) who says she visited with Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the fall of 2016. Claims about her visit were then made by an alleged associate, another FOX News contributor and Dallas financial manager named Ed Butowsky – and Butowsky claims that Ratner told him that Assange said his source was the late Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was shot and killed a block from his apartment in Washington DC on July 10, 2016. This of course infers, by extension, that Rich was murdered because he was the leaker. The Ratner-Butowsky story has been mentioned by a few mainstream media outlets, but is more popular in alternative American conservative media. All of this is purely speculative, and as yet, without any evidence to validate the theory. However, Butowsky’s third-hand claims have triggered a chain a lawsuits led by a libel suit filed by the family of Seth Rich against various parties and media outlets who made the claim that Rich leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The amount of media noise surrounding this issue can easily obfuscate some of the fundamental principles and themes which are governing the mainstream narrative of this story.

What’s important to note here is that just like Rohrbacher’s inference that Assange had agreed to provide information on the DNC leaks, Butowsky’s unfounded claim infers that Julian Assange gave up his source to Ellen Ratner – a core principle which Assange has sworn he would never betray. Again, such a narrative actually undermines the ethical and professional credibility and staunch reputation of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as serious journalists.

Rohrbacker’s approach wasn’t the first interface between US officials and Julian Assange. While Rohrbacher’s approach was a traditional face to face meeting and offer of a pardon, a previous approach was said to have been made by the FBI and CIA agencies in 2017, as reported by John Solomon in 2018, whereby Assange would be offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperation with intelligence agencies in mitigating some of the damage from WikiLeaks release of a CIA document trove. Solomon reports for The Hill:

This yarn begins in January 2017 when Assange’s legal team approached Waldman — known for his government connections — to see if the new Trump administration would negotiate with the WikiLeaks founder, holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy. They hoped Waldman, a former Clinton Justice Department official, might navigate the U.S. law enforcement bureaucracy and find the right people to engage.

Allegedly, FBI director James Comey then intervened later in the process in order to kill the deal.

The Rohrbacher story is just one of many fascinating details which will be introduced during the process of Assange’s hearing which will take place in two parts; in February, and then in May. But with all of these details and revelations, readers should pay close attention to how and why the news is being spun the way it is, and to the benefit of whom. Also, consider the source of the information.

The first half of Assange’s extradition hearing will begin on Monday Feb 24th at Woolwich Crown Court, where US lawyers will make the case that he should be extradited to the United States to face 18 federal counts of espionage and conspiring to commit computer intrusion, totally 175 years in prison – if he is found guilty.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Pentagon expects US public to buy lame excuse about missing weapons sent to Syria, Iraq

‘We weren’t keeping inventory’

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 20, 2020

US weapons worth some $715 million dollars were warehoused poorly and soldiers handling them did not keep receipts or records, so it’s impossible to tell how many, if any, ended up in wrong hands, the Pentagon says.

Supply units in Kuwait and elsewhere “did not maintain comprehensive lists of all equipment purchased and received” or “stored weapons outside in metal shipping containers, exposing the equipment to harsh environmental elements, such as heat and humidity.”

This is according to the partially redacted report by the Department of Defense’s inspector general (IG), of an audit into the “Counter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Train and Equip Fund” (CTEF), dated February 13 and published this week.

That is not to say that $715 million worth of US weapons, intended for the Iraqi military and “Vetted Syrian Opposition” – as the euphemism for US-allied militia goes – has gone missing, as some reports may have suggested. In Pentagon-speak, there was “a lack of a central repository for accountability documentation.” Once you cut through the obtuse verbiage, the IG report basically says there’s no way of figuring any of that out, because the troops charged with running the program did not maintain records or receipts.

The audit was commissioned because the DOD has requested $173.2 million for weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other CTEF-S equipment for the current fiscal year, which began in October. Without accurate records, the Pentagon risks buying stuff it doesn’t need and “further overcrowding” the warehouses in Kuwait, which is what caused the pricey hardware to be stored outside in the first place.

Even though the Trump administration declared Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) defeated back in March 2019, ensuring the “enduring defeat” of the terrorists apparently requires that the weapons and equipment must flow. While the US taxpayers don’t have a choice in footing the bill, expecting them to swallow the explanation – that their noble men and women in uniform are just too stupid, lazy or incompetent to keep a ledger – sounds a bit rich.

Washington has a notoriously spotty record of pouring weapons into Syria and Iraq. At one point in 2015, the Pentagon admitted the failure of its program to train and equip “Vetted Syrian Opposition” (also known as “moderate rebels”). Having spent $2 million per fighter, the US saw them defect to the Al-Qaeda affiliate group Al-Nusra, bringing the US-supplied weapons and kit along.

So the Pentagon doubled down in 2016, spending untold millions to train “dozens” of rebels in Turkey. It is unclear how many of those “moderates” took part in last year’s assault on areas held by US-allied Kurdish militias.

As late as September 2016, Al-Nusra commanders openly talked about getting US weapons, both “directly” and via third countries, such as Saudi Arabia. The Syrian government has since dealt the militants one defeat after another, and currently advances on their last remaining strongholds in the Idlib province.

While the US government and media have objected to these operations – and NATO member Turkey actually sent troops and tanks to Idlib in an attempt to halt them – a spokesman for the anti-IS coalition has just openly admitted Idlib is a nest of terrorists.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , , | 1 Comment

“The Donald Trump I know”: Abbas’ UN Speech and the Breakdown of Palestinian Politics

By Ramzy Baroud | Dissident Voice | February 20, 2020

A precious moment has been squandered, as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, had the chance to right a historical wrong, by reinstating Palestinian national priorities at the United Nations Security Council on February 11, through a political discourse that is completely independent from Washington and its allies.

For a long time, Abbas has been a hostage to the very language that designated him and his Authority as ‘moderates’ in the eyes of Israel and the West. Despite the Palestinian leader’s outward rejection of the US ‘Deal of the Century’ – which practically renders Palestinian national aspirations null and void – Abbas is keen to maintain his ‘moderate’ credentials for as long as possible.

Certainly, Abbas has given many speeches at the UN in the past and, every single time, he has failed to impress Palestinians. This time, however, things were meant to be different. Not only did Washington disown Abbas and the PA, it also scrapped its own political discourse on peace and the two-state solution altogether. More, the Trump administration has now officially given its blessing to Israel to annex nearly a third of the West Bank, taking Jerusalem ‘off the table’ and discarding the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Instead of directly meeting with leaders of the various Palestinian political parties and taking tangible steps to reactivate dormant but central political institutions such as the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Abbas preferred to meet with former Israeli right-wing Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in New York, and to carry on regurgitating his commitment to a by-gone era.

In his UN speech, Abbas said nothing new which, in this instance, is worse than not saying anything at all.

“This is the outcome of the project that has been introduced to us,” Abbas said, while holding a map of what a Palestinian state would look like under Donald Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’. “And this is the state that they are giving to us,” Abbas added, referring to that future state as a ‘Swiss cheese’, meaning a state fragmented by Jewish settlements, bypass-roads and Israeli military zones.

Even the term ‘Swiss cheese’, which was reported in some media as if a new phrase in this ever-redundant discourse, is actually an old coinage that has been referenced repeatedly by the Palestinian leadership itself, starting with the onset of the so-called peace process, a quarter of a century ago.

Abbas labored to appear exceptionally resolute as he emphasized certain words, like when he equated the Israeli occupation with the system of apartheid. His delivery, however, appeared unconvincing, lacking and, at times, pointless.

Abbas spoke of his great ‘surprise’ when Washington declared Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, subsequently relocating its embassy to the occupied city, as if the writing was not already on the wall and that, in fact, the embassy move was one of Trump’s main pledges to Israel even before his inauguration in January 2017.

“And then they cut off financial aid that was given to us,” Abbas said in a lamenting voice with reference to the US decision to withhold its aid to the PA in August 2018. “$840 million are held from us,” he said. “I don’t know who is giving Trump such horrid advice. Trump is not like this. Trump that I know is not like this,” Abbas exclaimed in a strange interjection as if to send a message to the Trump administration that the PA still has faith in the US President’s judgement.

“I would like to remind everyone that we have participated in the Madrid peace conference, and the Washington negotiations and the Oslo agreement and the Annapolis summit on the basis of international law,” Abbas recounted, signaling that he remains committed to the very political agenda that reaped the Palestinian people no political rewards whatsoever.

Abbas then went on to paint an imagined reality, where his Authority is supposedly building the “national institutions of a law-abiding, modern and democratic state that is constructed on the basis of international values; one that is predicated on transparency, accountability and fighting corruption.”

“Yes,” Abbas emphasized, as he looked at his audience with theatrical seriousness, “We are one of the most important countries (in the world) that is fighting corruption.” The PA leader, then, called on the Security Council to send a commission to investigate allegations of corruption within the PA, a bewildering and unnecessary invitation, considering that it is the Palestinian leadership that should be making demands on the international community to help enforce international law and end the Israeli occupation.

It went on like this, where Abbas vacillated between reading pre-written remarks that introduce no new ideas or strategies and unnecessary rants that reflect the PA’s political bankruptcy and Abbas’ own lack of imagination.

The PA President, of course, made sure to offer his habitual condemnation of Palestinian ‘terrorism’ by promising that Palestinians would not “resort to violence and terrorism regardless of the act of aggression against us.” He assured his audience that his Authority believes in “peace and fighting violence.” Without elaborating, Abbas declared his intention of continuing on the path of “popular and peaceful resistance,” which, in fact, does not exist in any shape or form.

This time around, Abbas’ speech at the UN was particularly inappropriate. Indeed, it was a failure in every possible way. The least, the Palestinian leader could have done is to articulate a powerful and collective Palestinian political discourse. Instead, his statement was merely a sad homage to his own legacy, one that is riddled with disappointments and ineptitude.

Expectedly, Abbas returned to Ramallah to greet his cheering supporters once more, who are always ready and waiting to raise posters of the ageing leader, as if his UN speech had succeeded in fundamentally shifting international political momentum in favor of Palestinians.

It has to be said that the real danger in the ‘Deal of the Century’ is not the actual stipulations of that sinister plan, but the fact that the Palestinian leadership is likely to find a way to co-exist with it, at the expense of the oppressed Palestinian people, as long as donors’ money continues to flow and as long as Abbas continues to call himself a president.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is http://www.ramzybaroud.net

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | 1 Comment

Blago Is Free

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | LewRockwell.com | February 20, 2020

On Tuesday, February 18, President Trump with excellent judgment commuted the 14 year prison sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, aka “Blago.”

“We have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich,” Trump said. “He’ll be able to go back home with his family after serving eight years in jail. That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion. And in the opinion of many others.”

The President thus brought to an end a disgraceful episode in American politics. After Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, his seat as Senator from Illinois became vacant. Blago was charged with trying to sell the seat.

If in fact Blago tried to sell the seat, he was just  practicing the dirty, rotten business of politics in the normal crooked fashion for Chicago and America. But out of all the corrupt pols, why did a federal prosecutor target a sitting governor, wiretap him, not allow him to use the wiretaps to defend himself, and send him to jail for 14 years?  His real “crime”, in the eyes of the monstrous Obama and his henchman Rahm Emmanuel, was that he refused to appoint the man Obama picked as his successor.

The indictment against Blago was unconstitutional. As the distinguished historian and authority on the Constitution Kevin Gutzman pointed out in an article written for LRC on January 6, 2009, “Interestingly, one might note that the statute Fitzgerald is enforcing against the governor bases Congress’s claim of power to criminalize corruption in state office on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. One really wonders at the idea that conspiring to sell Jesse Jackson, Jr. a Senate seat is interstate commerce. No one takes this idea seriously; rather, it is based on a common lawyers’ corruption — yes, corruption — of language. On simple federal arrogation of state power. This corruption has far more far-reaching consequences than anything Blagojevich is accused of having done.”

The indictment and trial were gross miscarriages of justice, as President Trump has said. Harvey Silverglate in an article written in 2011 gave the best analysis of the whole rotten business: “The most controversial charge Blagojevich faced was that he planned to sell Barack Obama’s US Senate seat. But Fitzgerald decided to come out swinging, terminated the wiretaps on Blagojevich’s home and office, arrested the then-sitting governor, held a sensational press conference, and called it a wrap before this alleged sale would have even taken place. Fitzgerald was obviously unwilling to wait out the unfolding situation to see if the governor was really serious about “selling” the seat to the highest bidder.

Had Blagojevich actually followed through with the sale of a Senate seat, Fitzgerald’s heavy-handed prosecutorial approach might have been justified. But in light of the fact that no seat was sold, and that these appointments are regularly used for political benefit, the reasonable doubt that a crime was actually committed would appear to be overwhelming. For a US Attorney who is known for “crossing his T’s and dotting his I’s,” you have to wonder why Fitzgerald didn’t spring into action after the sale of the seat, once the dirty deal was done. Blagojevich’s own writing may give us a clue. Blagojevich claims in his memoir, “The Governor,” that the goal of the Senate appointment was to get a political opponent out of the way, not to sell the seat for cash. If this scenario is to be believed, then Fitzgerald went forward with the case when he did because, had he waited until after the seat was filled, there would not have been a case since the seat would have been awarded not for cash, but for quite traditional political advantage.

One of the most shocking, and seemingly damning, sound bites that came from the wiretaps was Blagojevich’s assertion that Obama’s Senate seat was “a [expletive] valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing.” A US Attorney whose last few cases ended unfavorably might be interested in spinning this quote to seem as though a cash transaction was being arranged in exchange for the Senate seat. However, if Blagojevich were looking to use the seat for his political benefit, then his statement would be crass, but would also be evidence that he was operating within the parameters of the law. The type of political maneuvering engaged in by the then-governor may seem to the average citizen (or juror, for that matter), to be less than wholesome, perhaps even a bit sneaky, but if every unwholesome or sneaky maneuver were a crime, we would not be able to build the prisons quickly enough to meet demand.”

Why didn’t Fitzgerald wait? Joe Hall, writing on February 19 in Gateway Pundit has a good explanation. He says that Blago was set up by Mueller, Comey, and the Deep State Gang and that President Trump’s release of Blago may be intended to send the Gang the message that he will fight them. Hall cites investigative reporter Marty Waters, who said last August “that the Deep State, led by Comey and Mueller, did the same thing with the fraudulent Mueller investigation sham as they did in the past.  They create distraction, diversion and disinformation. In the early 2000’s they created Plamegate to distract and divert from the billions lost in Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction narrative that got the US into the war.  In the mid-2000’s, they created the Rezco/Blagogate scandals to cover up for Obama’s corrupt actions early in his administration and while in the US Senate. The Mueller investigation distracted from the many crimes involving Obama and the Clintons and was in the same mold as the prior sham investigations.”

Hall sums up and concludes: “Of course Mueller was the Head of the FBI throughout most of the 2000’s and before Comey took over the now corrupted institution. Also, Comey claimed Fitzgerald was his attorney after it was suspected that Comey shared classified information with Fitzgerald during the Russian hoax scandal.”

After Trump commuted Blago’s sentence, Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker condemned the President’s decision. He said; “Illinoisans have endured far too much corruption, and we must send a message to politicians that corrupt practices will no longer be tolerated. President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time.”

Pritzker’s self-righteous moralizing is ironic. According to a story in the Chicago Tribune published May 31, 2017, “Pritzker, a billionaire businessman with political ambitions, told Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich he was “really not that interested” in the US Senate seat the governor was dealing in late 2008. Instead, Pritzker offered his own idea: Would Blagojevich make him Illinois treasurer?”

Blago is no angel, but I can’t help liking him. I admire his spirit. He refused to cave to Obama and the higher-ups. Now that he is out, he is free to tell us where the bodies are buried. You can be sure he knows a lot and with the commutation, the Feds can’t shut him up anymore. Blago has Obama on the ropes, and fortunately for those of us who care about truth, he is a skilled boxing champ.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Show Trial Ends: Roger Stone Sentenced to 40 months in Prison, Judge Decries ‘Threat to Democracy’

By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | February 20, 2020

Today, the long-time friend and Trump campaign consultant Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in a federal prison for multiple charges relating to his Congressional testimony and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued Stone’s sentence after his lawyers had first requested that he receive no prison time.

After the sentence was handed down, Stone refrained from making a personal statement to the court.

Normally, one might refrain from criticizing a judge too harshly, but this was no ordinary closing remarks performance, as Judge Jackson seemed to go on forever, attempting to address all of her critics, and seemed compelled to want to justify the premise of the legal proceedings.

After reviewing her statements, to say (and I don’t say this lightly) that she had personal axe to grind is an understatement, and her extended diatribe appears to point to an obvious political agenda.

Judge Jackson wasn’t shy about showing her bias either, remaining in lockstep with the original RussiaGate narrative – even though it’s been proven to be hoax after a 3 year-long Mueller Investigation produced no evidence of alleged ‘Trump-Russia Collusion.’ She clearly attempted to do this here:

“He was not prosecuted for standing up for the president,” said Judge Jackson during her closing remarks. “He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”

Only the President did nothing which required covering for.

As that wasn’t enough, the judge went on during her hours-long sentencing hearing to claim that what Roger Stone did was somehow “a threat to our democracy”.

We’re still trying to work out exactly what she is talking about there, or how the 67 year-old Stone became so powerful as to bring down democracy in the United States. I mean, he has certain skills, but take down the United States of America? Here Jackson is dog whistling to the RussiaGate consensus – when in fact there was no collusion between Stone, Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia – nor did Stone have any ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks. Any rational, objective professional might look at that and conclude that there was no underlying conspiracy which this entire Russia Investigation effort was supposed to uncover.

The truth is, Stone’s entire case was erected not only to help maintain the RussiaGate narrative, but to help towards delegitimizing Trump’s historic 2016 upset victory. Validating the hoax also helps to fortify a hawkish US foreign policy against Russia, and all the political, geopolitical and military industrial spoils that go with it.

In response to public comments made by Trump about the trial being a farce, Judge Jackson felt compelled to defend her political show trial, exclaiming that, “There was nothing unfair, phony or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.”

If only it ended there. She kept going, insisting that the Stone case was ‘serious’ and not a joke, which Trump had publicly intimated. “The problem is nothing about this case was a joke,” said Jackson just prior to sentencing Stone. “It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a prank,” said Jackson.

That old Hamlet adage comes to mind, The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Due to the President’s insistence on weighing-in with such vigour, it seems likely that Stone will eventually be pardoned by Trump, but it’s not certain when. Some have speculated that the White House would be better served to wait until after the General Election, but then again, Trump tends to defy the experts on conventional logic.

As I wrote in a feature published this morning at RT International, Roger Stone was simply the last available scalp for the Mueller brigade in order to lend credence to the underlying RussiaGate narrative upon which Stone’s criminal case is built. His criminality was assumed under the guise ‘Trump-Russia Collusion’ which is predicated on the as yet evidence-free official conspiracy theory that Russian GRU operatives hacked the DNC and Podesta and then gave those emails to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. I explained how the underlying assumptions are fallacies and why the underlying assumptions in this case never did raise to the standard of criminality, while all of the little process crimes and reprimand which came during the legal circus was what this judge was compiling to build up Stone’s charge sheet.

In the end, all of this is just more grist to the mill. But for how much longer? The level of panic and desperation surrounding this case, as well as the politicized behavior of the judge and prosecutors – really demonstrated how deeply infected the federal judiciary is with partisan propaganda and conspiracy theories of Russian interference which were debunked long ago.

Any reasonable, objective judge or jury would look at this picture and deduce that there were definitely a lot of things going on here (like things that happen during elections, leaks and campaign bluster), but not a crime. For the prosecution, of the supposed ‘crimes’ came long after 2016, as part of the process of trying to prove there was Trump-Russia Collusion, which there wasn’t.

So one should consider Roger Stone as collateral damage in what is perhaps the greatest political hoax in American history.

Of course, very few will step forward and stand-up for a character like Roger Stone, and why would they? He’s a flamboyant political operative who cut his teeth working under Richard Nixon of all people. He’s a guy everyone loves to hate, so the support is sparse.

But let’s not forget that back when this all began – it was Stone who told Congress that there was never any Russian involvement. Of course, Stone was right, and the evidence is on his side. Official Washington on the other hand, was wrong. Yet, here we are three years later, still re-litigating an election which happened four years ago.

When will American exorcise its 2016 collective trauma and return to some semblance of sanity?

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Hamas delegation meets Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister

MEMO | February 20, 2020

A senior Hamas delegation has met with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Islamic Resistance Movement said that its delegation was led by the head of its International Office, Mousa Abu Marzook, accompanied by Political Bureau member Sami Khater and the former leader of its Political Bureau, Khaled Meshaal, as well as its representative in Moscow.

The Hamas delegation briefed Bogdanov on the latest political developments in the Palestinian cause, including the US “deal of the century”.

They reiterated that the deal is targeting the Palestinian people, their legitimate right to return and the efforts to establish an independent and sovereign state, which is why it has been rejected not only by the movement, but also all segments of Palestinian society.

Bogdanov reaffirmed his country’s support for the Palestinian people and rejection of any “peace plan” rejected by them. Russia, he explained, is ready to provide support for the Palestinians in order to end the internal division and achieve the national unity that is the key to achieving their legitimate objectives.

Furthermore, the Russian official stressed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved on the basis of international law, including UN General Assembly resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | 4 Comments

The PA is blindly accepting international impositions on Palestinians

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 20, 2020

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been trading the same rhetoric about not having a suitable partner for diplomatic negotiations. The senior adviser and spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, recently took the statement further to again assert the PA’s distaste for legitimate armed resistance. This was his attempt to reassure Israel about the PA’s commitment to remain tethered to failed diplomacy.

“The Palestinians do not want violence and it is very important for us that the Israelis know this and understand that our path is not violent,” Abu Rudeineh told Israeli political correspondents. Why would the PA seek to reassure the colonial presence in Palestine built and maintained upon violence that the colonised population are not seeking to use violent measures to escape from the Israeli yoke?

Unlike Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and other measures such as its colonial settlement expansion, which are clearly defined as war crimes by international law, Palestinian resistance against the colonial violence of occupation is entirely legitimate. Abu Rudeineh is doing Palestinians yet another disservice by refusing to recognise the whole spectrum of the anti-colonial struggle. Furthermore, the PA does not differentiate between various forms of violence, which are defined by context.

It is the Palestinians who should be seeking reassurances that no further violence will be inflicted upon them. However, the normalisation of Israeli violence, combined with the diplomacy which allows Israel to function as a violent colonial state, prevent Palestinians from making such demands.

A group of protesters gather in front of United Nations headquarters to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York, United States on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru - Anadolu Agency]

Protesters at the UN headquarters oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru – Anadolu Agency ]

What’s more, Palestinians are not guaranteed protection from Israeli violence; their rights are simply brushed aside. To make matters worse, Abu Rudeineh has eliminated this factor in his discussions regarding future “peace negotiations” to enable the façade of Israel’s “victim” status to be preserved. In keeping with the parameters set by the international community’s endorsement of Israel’s false “security” and “self-defence” narrative, Abbas’s spokesman is misrepresenting the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and, as a result, regaling Israel with further opportunities to portray itself as the only democratic partner in negotiations. The PA would do well to remember that such talks would not have been necessary if the UN had taken the necessary steps to halt the earlier settler-colonial presence in Palestine and thus prevented Israel from manifesting itself on ethnically-cleansed Palestinian land.

However, the PA is merely absorbing the external narratives imposed by the international community on one hand, and the US on the other, the latter through its so-called “deal of the century”. The constant definition of the Palestinians according to external agendas have damaged the Palestinian cause beyond recognition.

Non-violent resistance and diplomacy have been manufactured by the international community as acceptable paths for Palestinians precisely because, on their own, they fragment the efficacy of anti-colonial struggle. The right to resist colonialism by all means is legitimate, whether diplomatic negotiations are taking place, or might be taking place in the future. Neither the international community nor the PA have the right to prevent Palestinians from exercising their right to armed struggle. It is a decision that must be made by the people themselves, since the Palestinian leadership has long abandoned the Palestinian cause to curry favour with the international community for its own self-serving hierarchy.

There is no need to reassure Israel as Abu Rudeineh has done; the only reminder that Israel needs is that Palestinians have every right to reclaim their land. Beyond that assurance, the PA’s rhetoric must be seen for what it is; an additional means of destroying the Palestinian struggle, for the benefit of Israel and the international community.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Colombia: Colonel Involves General in Extrajudicial Killings

teleSUR | February 20, 2020

Colombian Colonel Alvaro Amortegui said that General Mario Montoya ordered him to kill 17 civilians captured in an operation and make them appear as if they were guerrilla fighters killed in combat.

“In 2001… I captured 17 guys inside a house. [Montoya] called me on my cell phone and told me, ‘I’ve already sent you the bracelets.’ Then I replied, ‘don’t send me the bracelets… I captured these men alive and they stay alive’,” said Colonel Amortegui during an interview with Caracol Radio in which he also reported the theft of ammunition, uniforms and other Army material.

This senior officer mentioned that all this happened when he returned from Sinai, a peninsula in Egypt where the Colombian troops are part of the peacekeeping mission of the Multinational Force & Observers (MFO).

Given the implications of his claims, the Caracol Radio journalists asked Colonel Amortegui to better explain what happened with General Montoya, who was commander of the Colombian Army between 2006 and 2008, during the Presidency of Alvaro Uribe, a far-right politician who has been investigated by the Supreme Court.

In his response, Amortegui indicated that General Montoya was referring to the bracelets used by the militants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

“He sent me FARC bracelets. Because [the 17 captured] were not FARC [fighters],” the colonel said.

The journalists insisted that Amortegui provide more details about what the General was asking for, to which he replied that Montoya “was asking me to kill them. What else do you want?.”

Eight days ago, Retired General Montoya declared for the first time before the Special Justice for Peace (JEP), although his appearance was described by the victims of state terrorism as “a mockery.”

“It was a mockery before the transitional justice mechanism, which has the task of investigating the most serious crimes committed amidst the armed conflict,” said lawyer Jose Alvear Restrepo who represents the victims of state crimes.

Between 1988 and 2014, the “false positives” was a practice whereby the military cheated poor young people, even those with disabilities, with promises of employment and then took them to distant places to execute them.

The bodies of these civilian victims used to be later presented to the authorities as if they had been killed-in-combat guerrilla fighters, which allowed the military to obtain benefits from their superiors.

So far, the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office has investigated about 5,000 cases of extrajudicial killings. At least 1,500 officials and troops were involved in these illegal practices.​​​​​​​

February 20, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

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