Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Trump, Kennedy, and the Russia Collusion Delusion

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 15, 2020

President Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s jail sentence has brought the Russia collusion delusion back into the limelight.

Special prosecutor (and former FBI Director) Robert Mueller, the lawyer in charge of conducting an in-depth investigation into whether Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election, immediately fired a salvo against Trump’s commutation in an op-ed defending his investigation that was published in the Washington Post.

Mueller’s op-ed was then followed by an op-ed by one of his senior prosecutors, Andrew Weismann, in yesterday’s New York Times, which called for summoning Stone before a grand jury to force him to tell the truth about why he lied. Weissmann’s idea is that if Stone fails to tell the truth again, he should again be prosecuted and punished for perjury, preferably after Trump is defeated in November.

What about Clapper?

Mueller and Weissmann can wax eloquent all they want about the importance of testifying truthfully to Congress or federal investigators. But their words ring hollow given what happened to James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. He knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally testified falsely to Congress about the mass secret surveillance that the NSA was conducting on the American people. U.S. prosecutors turned a blind eye toward his perjury and did nothing to indict or prosecute him. Why go after Stone (or, for that matter, Martha Stewart) and do nothing against Clapper?

The Russia collusion delusion

What is really going on here? It’s the Russia collusion delusion that is at the center of this entire controversy. Mueller, Weissmann, and their Inspector Clouseau cohorts were convinced from the beginning that there was a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russians to rig the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. Even worse, they, along with members of the FBI and the national-security establishment, obviously convinced themselves that as part of the deal, Trump may well have become an unregistered covert agent of the Russian government.

Anyone who thinks that the U.S. Cold War mindset ended with the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1989 is loving in la la land. Sure, the Berlin Wall came crashing down, Soviet troops withdrew from Eastern Europe, and the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dismantled. But the anti-Soviet, anti-Russian mindset that afflicted U.S. officials for 45 years, especially those in the national-security establishment, never disappeared. As long as Russia has maintained a sense of independence from U.S. control, it has continued to be considered a grave threat to U.S. “national security.”

The fact is that the U.S. national-security establishment — or what President Eisenhower referred to as the military-industrial-congressional complex — will never permit a U.S. president to establish normal and friendly relations with Russia. And any president who does so will automatically be considered suspect, just as Trump has been. If he goes too far in that direction, he runs the risk of being considered a grave threat to “national security.”

Kennedy: a threat to “national security?

That is, of course, what happened with President Kennedy. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, he made no bones about it. He threw the gauntlet down to the U.S. national security establishment. In his famous Peace Speech at American University 3 1/2 months before he was assassinated, he suddenly announced that he was declaring an end to the Cold War. He also stated that he intended to establish a relationship of peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union and the communist world. He told the audience and the world that despite philosophical differences, there was no reason why America and Russia could not work together with a peaceful and friendly relationship. He then entered into secret personal negotiations to that end with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

As part of his plan, Kennedy announced a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. He told aides that as soon as he won the 1964 election, he would pull out the rest. He also entered into a nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviets. He proposed a joint trip to the moon, which would have meant sharing rocket technology with the Soviets. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the next logical step was going to be — the dismantling of the Cold War apparatus and a restoration of a limited-government republic.

Imagine how all of that went over with the U.S. national-security establishment, which was already convinced that there was a communist conspiracy based in Moscow to take over the world, including the United States. The notion that the free world could live in peaceful harmony with the communist world was considered naive folly at best and treason at worst. In the eyes of the U.S. national security establishment, ending the Cold War, which likely would have led to the dismantling of the U.S. national security state, was equivalent to simply surrendering the United States to the communists.

After all, don’t forget that this was the very reason why the U.S. government was converted after World War II into a national-security state — to enable U.S. officials to exercise the same omnipotent, dark-side powers employed by the communists in order to prevent their supposed conspiracy from succeeding.

Don’t forget also that sympathy and empathy with communism or the Russians was precisely the reason U.S. national-security state officials initiated regime change operations against foreign presidents and prime ministers both before and after the Kennedy assassination: Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Lumumba in Congo, Castro in Cuba, and Allende in Chile.

How could U.S. national-security state officials just ignore a U.S. president who suddenly had become a threat to national security, a much graver threat in fact than the foreign officials they had ousted from power in regime-change operations.

Given their conviction that Kennedy’s actions were going to result in a communist takeover of the United States, what were U.S. officials supposed to do — just let it happen? For all they knew, Kennedy had become a covert agent of the Soviets, just as U.S. officials in our time have become convinced that Trump became a covert agent of the Russians.

What Kennedy was doing was certainly not an impeachable offense, and so they couldn’t remove him from office that way, as they tried to do with Trump. Moreover, it was clear that Kennedy would almost certainly defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election.

What to do? Follow the Constitution and let America fall to the communists? Or do here in the United States what had to be done in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, and Chile to protect “national security”?

See also:

JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne

The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger

The Kennedy Autopsy 2: LBJ’s Role in the Assassination by Jacob Hornberger

Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger

The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger

CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley

“The National Security State and JFK,” a FFF conference featuring Oliver Stone and ten other speakers

“Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence,” a five-part video by Douglas P. Horne

“The JFK Assassination,” a video series by Jacob Hornberger

July 16, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Bolivia’s Struggle to Restore Democracy after OAS Instigated Coup

By Frederick B. Mills, Rita Jill Clark-Gollub, Alina Duarte | Council on Hemispheric Affairs | July 9, 2020

On October 21, 2019, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a fateful communique on the presidential elections in Bolivia: “The OAS Mission expresses its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls.”[1] The mission’s report came in a highly polarized political context. Rather than wait for a careful and fair-minded analysis of the election results, it raised unsubstantiated doubts about the legitimacy of President Evo Morales’ lead as some of the later vote tallies were being reported. This was a bombshell report  at a time when it appeared that Morales had garnered a sufficient margin of victory over his right wing opponent, Carlos Mesa, to avoid a runoff election.

The manufactured electoral fraud was quickly debunked by experts in the field. Detailed analyses of the election results were conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)[2] and Walter R. Mebane, Jr., professor of Political Science and Statistics at the University of Michigan in early November 2019.[3]  These were later corroborated by researchers at MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab[4] and more recently by an article published by the New York Times[5] featuring the study of three academics: Nicolás Idrobo (University of Pennsylvania), Dorothy Kronick (University of Pennsylvania), and Francisco Rodríguez (Tulane University)[6].

All of these professional and academic analyses found the charges of fraud by the OAS to have been unfounded.

The OAS electoral mission, however, had already poisoned the well. The false narrative of electoral fraud gave ammunition to anti-Bolivarian forces in the OAS and the right wing opposition inside Bolivia to contest the outcome of the election and go on the offensive against Morales and his party, the Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS). During a three-week period, a right wing coalition led protests over the alleged electoral fraud, while pro-government counter protesters defended the constitutional government. The military and police cracked down on the pro-Morales protesters, while showing sympathy for right wing demonstrators. Then, on November 10, 2019, in its “Electoral integrity analysis,” the OAS doubled down on its dubious claims, impugning “the integrity of the results of the election on October 20, 2019.”[7]

The track record of the OAS electoral mission, which was invited to observe and assess the election by the Bolivian government of Evo Morales, had already been stained by its 2015 debacle in Haiti.[8] In the case of Bolivia, the mission politicized election results and set the stage for murder by a coup regime. It appears that there is not much political daylight between the judgment of the OAS electoral commission and the rabidly anti-Bolivarian OAS Secretary, Luis Almagro. Far from finding that the coup against Morales constituted a breach in the democratic order of Bolivia, the OAS simply exploited its position as arbiter of the election to rally behind the right wing coup leaders.

Morales resigns and a “de facto” right wing regime unleashes a wave of repression

Despite the relentless drive by Washington against Bolivarian governments in the region, President Morales was apparently unprepared for the disloyalty within his security forces and he was caught off guard by the OAS propensity to serve US interests in the region. MAS activists, legislators, union activists, Indigenous organizations, and social movement activists, however, continued to resist the coup even as they faced arrest and violence from the de facto regime.

The coup forces exercised extreme violence against authorities of the Morales’ administration and MAS legislators (the majority of Congress). Several houses were burned down and some relatives of authorities were kidnapped and injured, all with total impunity and without protection by the security forces.[9]

With the OAS-instigated coup gaining traction within the security forces and police, as well as Morales’ political adversaries, the President chose the path of accommodation. He offered to reconstitute the electoral authority and hold fresh elections. This concession to OAS authority was met by calls from the police and military for his resignation. Rather than launch a campaign of resistance from the MAS stronghold of Chapare, Morales resigned his post, opting for exile in an unsuccessful bid to avoid further bloodshed. Jeanine Áñez, an opposition party senator with Plan Progreso para Bolivia Convergencia Nacional, proclaimed herself President after the resignation of Senate President Adriana Salvatierra, who refused to legitimize the coup with an unjustified “succession.”[10]

The scenes in the streets of Cochabamba turned ugly. It was a field day for racist attacks on the majority Indigenous population. The Indigenous flag–the wiphala–was burned in the streets, and much fanfare was made when Áñez, surrounded by right wing legislators, held up a large leather bible and declared, “The Bible has returned to the palace.” Such attempts to resubordinate Bolivia’s plurinational heritage were met with widespread resistance.

Workers of all industries and sectors continue protests against Áñez and to protect social rights created under Morales’s government (photo credit: MAS-IPSP, http://www.masipsp.bo).

After thirteen years of impressive economic growth, poverty reduction, recovery of the nation’s natural resources, and the inclusion of formerly marginalized sectors in the political life of the country under the leadership of President Evo Morales, Bolivia  had now suffered an enormous blow to the liberatory project of the 2009 Constitution. But the coup fit perfectly into the US-OAS drive to recolonize the Americas.

Secretary General Luis Almagro, who would never let an opportunity to attack the Bolivarian cause go to waste, immediately recognized self-proclaimed President, Senator Jeanine  Áñez, adding yet one more crime to the long list from his shameful tenure at the OAS.[11] At a special meeting of the OAS on November 12, 2020 Almagro declared, “There was a coup in the State of Bolivia; it happened when an electoral fraud gave the triumph to Evo Morales in the first round.”[12]

During the meeting, 14 member states of the OAS (Argentina, Brasil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the US, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru) and the unelected US-backed shadow government of Venezuela called for new elections in Bolivia “as soon as possible,” while Mexico, Uruguay and Nicaragua warned against the precedent being set by the “coup” against Evo Morales. The ambassador of Mexico to the OAS, Luz Elena Baños, described the coup against Morales as “a serious breach in the constitutional order by means of a coup d’etat,” adding “the painful days when the Armed Forces sustained and deposed governments ought to remain in the past.” [13] The Trump administration echoed Almagro’s declaration and moved quickly to endorse what was now a “de facto” government.[14] The OAS was now at the service of two unelected, US-backed, self-proclaimed presidents (Juan Guaidó for Venezuela and Jeanine Áñez for Bolivia).

What followed was the brutal repression of widespread protests amid grass roots clamor for the return of President Morales,[15] who, from his exile in Mexico and later Argentina, still held great clout among rank and file MAS militants and the popular movements. The  horrific massacre in Sacaba, on November 15, followed by a massacre in Senkata, on November 19, carried out by the security forces, exposes the coup regime to future prosecution for crimes against humanity.[16] Rather than pacify the country, the repression only galvanized the MAS, which still held a majority in the legislature, as well as the peasant unions and grassroots organizations in their struggle to restore Bolivian democracy. There was indeed a coup, but it had not and still has not been consolidated.

New elections could be compromised by lawfare

Today, Bolivia stands at a crossroads. In June 2020, popular calls were mounting for new elections and the restoration of democracy, despite the ongoing repression. In response to this pressure, on June 22,  Áñez signed off on legislation to hold new elections in September. Former president Carlos Mesa (2003-2005) of the right wing Citizens Community Party would face off against the MAS  candidate, former Minister of Finance  (2006-2019), Luis Arce. Áñez’s decision drew the ire of Minister of Government, Arturo Murillo, who characterizes the most popular political party in the country as narco-terrorist. Murillo even threatened MAS legislators with arrest if they refused to approve promotions for the very military officials responsible for the repression.[17]

Should democratic elections prevail, recent polls do not look good for the “de facto” regime. In a poll taken by CELAG between June 13 and July 3, the MAS candidate, Luis Arce, leads with 41.9% support, followed by Carlos Mesa, with 26.8%, and Áñez, with 13.3%.[18]

Luis Arce, from the MAS party, leads the presidential race in Bolivia (Source: CELAG, https://www.celag.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/panorama-politico-y-social-bolivia-web-2.pdf)

Although Áñez initially said she would not run for president,[19] she later decided to do so even over the objections of her fellow opposition members.[20] The latter said that this went against her purported objective of only serving as a transition government until new elections could be held—initially on May 3, but later canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only was Áñez never a favorite in the polls, her de facto government has been unrelenting in its attempts to persecute the MAS and kick it out of the race.

On March 30 a government oversight agency (Gestora Pública de Seguridad Social de Largo Plazo) filed formal charges against MAS presidential candidate Luis Arce for “economic damages to the State” while he was Minister of Finance. According to the Bolivian Information Agency, his alleged crimes are linked to the contracting of two foreign companies to provide software for the administration of the national pension system.[21]

The charges state that the previous administration paid US$3 million as an advance for a contract valued at US$5.1 million to the Panamanian company Sysde International Inc. However, said company never delivered the software. Consequently, the MAS administration contracted the Colombian company Heinsohn Business Technology for US$10.4 million, on top of which payments were to be made of US$1.6 million annually for the license and source code.

Luis Arce responded to the charges during a press conference,[22] stating that during his tenure, “We entered into a contract for a system and the company failed us, so we filed suit against the company.” But he stressed that the charges simply seek to disqualify the MAS to prevent the party from participating in the presidential election.

Evo Morales took to Twitter to say, “The imminent electoral defeat of the de facto government is leading it to trump up new charges against the MAS-IPSP every day. Now, as we have denounced, they have filed charges based on false conjecture against our candidate to ban him from running for office because he is leading in the polls.”[23]

On July 6, the Attorney General of Bolivia charged Evo Morales himself. The charges are terrorism and financing of terrorism coordinated from exile, and preventive detention has been requested.  This is a rehashing of similar charges brought last November, charges denied by Morales.[24]

The persecution against the overthrown government has not stopped. Seven former officials remain asylees at the Mexican Embassy in La Paz: the former Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana Taborga; the former Minister of Defense, Javier Zavaleta; the former government minister, Hugo Moldiz Mercado; the former Minister of Justice, Héctor Arce Zaconeta; the former Minister of Cultures, Wilma Alanoca Mamani; the former governor of the Department of Oruro, Víctor Hugo Vásquez; and the former director of the Information Technology Agency, Nicolás Laguna.

The current Minister of Government, Arturo Murillo, affirmed upon assuming power that the authorities of the constitutional government of Evo Morales would be “hunted” and imprisoned before any arrest warrant was issued.[25] And now, eight months after the coup d’etat, the de facto government has refused to deliver safeguards to the asylum seekers at the embassy even though Bolivia and Mexico are parties to the American Convention on Human Rights, which in its article 22 establishes the right to seek and receive asylum[26].

Calls for free and fair elections without subversion by the OAS

The consequences of the OAS’ bad faith monitoring of the 2019 Bolivian election cannot be overstated. Not only were lives lost in the chaos and violence spurred by the statements of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission, which also resulted in scores of injuries and detentions. But the de facto regime continues its reign of terror, even repressing people protesting hunger during the pandemic lockdown,[27] while it dismantles the extensive social programs put into place during the years of MAS government.[28] Despite the repression, grassroots social movements in Bolivia, most notably peasant and Indigenous women who have bravely withstood attacks by the de facto regime, continue to insist on true democracy. They are inspired by the 2009 Constitution creating the Plurinational State, with its promise of a “democratic, productive, peace-loving and peaceful Bolivia, committed to the full development and free determination of the peoples.”[29]

Indigenous women have been at the forefront of the fight to restore democracy in Bolivia (photo credit: MAS-IPSP, http://www.masipsp.bo).

On July 8, the MAS-IPSP “categorically” rejected the participation of an OAS electoral mission for the September presidential election, on account of their responsibility for the coup against the constitutional government.[30] The communique declared that “it is not ethical for [the OAS electoral mission] to participate again for having been part of and complicit with a coup against the democracy and  Social State of Constitutional Law of Bolivia”, and “that [the OAS] is not an impartial organization to defend and guarantee peace, democracy and transparency, but rather a sponsor of petty interests that are foreign to the democratic will of the Bolivian people.” [31]

Bolivia is at a crossroads.  Will the de facto regime of Jeanine Áñez, having completed a coup and in command of the security forces, allow a return to democratic procedures to resolve political differences? Or will she join her Minister of Government, Arturo Murillo, in seeking to undermine, through political persecution and lawfare, any chance that the MAS ticket will be on the ballot, let alone allow free elections to take place?

The condemnation of the coup by Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay on November 12 was just the start of international solidarity with the call for a return to democracy in Bolivia. On November 21, 31 US organizations denounced “the civic-military coup in Bolivia.” [32] On June 29, 2020 the Grupo de Puebla, a forum that convenes former presidents, intellectuals, and progressive leaders of the Americas, released a statement condemning the actions of the OAS. “The Puebla Group considers that what happened in Bolivia casts serious doubts on the role of the OAS as an impartial electoral observer in the future.”[33] The international community can honor the clamour for free and fair elections in Bolivia by condemning the de facto regime’s use of political persecution and lawfare, supporting democratic elections in September, and rejecting any further  role of the OAS in monitoring elections in the Americas.

Patricio Zamorano provided editorial support and research for this article.
Translations from Spanish to English are by the authors.

Luis Arce, presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca, running for the vice-presidency. They lead all surveys so far (photo credit: MAS-IPSP, http://www.masipsp.bo/).

End notes

[1] “Statement of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Bolivia,” https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-085/19

[2] “What Happened in Bolivia’s 2019 Vote Count?” https://cepr.net/report/bolivia-elections-2019-11/

[3] “Evidence Against Fraudulent Votes Being Decisive in the Bolivia Election,”  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/Bolivia2019.pdf

[4] “Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to suspect fraud,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud/

[5] “New York Times Admits Key Falsehoods that Drove Last Year’s Coup in Bolivia: Falsehoods Peddled by the US, its Media, and the Times,” https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/. See also the study by CELAG, “Sobre la OEA y las elecciones en Bolivia”, (Nov. 19, 2019). CELAG conducted a study of both the OAS report and CEPR’s analysis and concluded: “The findings of the analysis allow us to affirm that the preliminary report of the OAS does not provide any evidence that could be definitive to demonstrate the alleged “fraud” alluded to by Secretary General, Luis Almagro, at the Permanent Council meeting held on November 12 . On the contrary, instead of sticking to a technically grounded electoral audit, the OAS produced a questionable report to induce a false deduction in public opinion: that the increase in the gap in favor of Evo Morales in the final section of the count was expanding by fraudulent causes and not by the sociopolitical characteristics and the dynamics of electoral behavior that occur between the rural and urban world in Bolivia.” https://www.celag.org/sobre-la-oea-y-las-elecciones-en-bolivia/

[6] “Do Shifts in Late-Counted Votes Signal Fraud? Evidence From Bolivia,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3621475

[7] “Preliminary Findings Report to the General Secretariat,” http://www.oas.org/documents/eng/press/Electoral-Integrity-Analysis-Bolivia2019.pdf

[8] “Elections in Haiti pose post-electoral crisis, by Clément Doleac and  Sabrina Hervé, Dec. 10, 2015. COHA. https://www.coha.org/elections-in-haiti-pose-post-electoral-crisis/

[9] “El Grupo de Puebla rechazó el golpe contra Evo Morales y se solidarizó con el pueblo boliviano,” https://www.infonews.com/el-grupo-puebla-rechazo-el-golpe-contra-evo-morales-y-se-solidarizo-el-pueblo-boliviano-n281357

[10] “Salvatierra: Mi renuncia fue coordinada con Evo y Alvaro,” https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2020/1/24/salvatierra-mi-renuncia-fue-coordinada-con-evo-alvaro-244454.html&sa=D&ust=1593696030403000&usg=AFQjCNE_kAMqtAOBGCXdjJV5nkBsfQEWPQ

[11] “Almagro: Evo Morales fue quien cometió un “golpe de Estado,” DW. https://www.dw.com/es/almagro-evo-morales-fue-quien-cometi%C3%B3-un-golpe-de-estado/a-51218739

[12] https://twitter.com/oas_official/status/1194389549037830145?lang=en

[13] “La OEA y la crisis en Bolivia: un choque de relatos irreconciliables”, EFE, Nov. 12, 2019. https://www.efe.com/efe/usa/politica/la-oea-y-crisis-en-bolivia-un-choque-de-relatos-irreconciliables/50000105-4109588

[14] “Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding the Resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-regarding-resignation-bolivian-president-evo-morales/

[15] “With the Right-wing coup in Bolivia nearly complete, the junta is hunting down the last remaining dissidents,” https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/27/right-wing-coup-bolivia-complete-junta-hunting-dissidents/

[16] “Brutal Repression in Cochabamba, Bolivia: So far nine killed, scores wounded,” COHA.  https://www.coha.org/brutal-repression-in-cochabamba-bolivia-november-15-2019/

[17] “Bolivian regime threatens to imprison lawmakers, officials,” https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolivian-Regime-Threatens-to-Imprison-Lawmakers-Officials-20200524-0004.html

[18] “Encuesta Bolivia, July 2020”, CELAG, https://www.celag.org/encuesta-bolivia-julio-2020/

[19] “Evo Morales busca un candidato y Añez dice que no participará en elecciones”, https://www.lavoz.com.ar/mundo/evo-morales-busca-un-candidato-y-anez-dice-que-no-participara-en-elecciones

[20] “A Jeanine Añez hasta los aliados le critican su candidatura”, https://www.pagina12.com.ar/244221-a-jeanine-anez-hasta-los-aliados-le-critican-su-candidatura

[21] Gestora Pública denuncia formalmente al exministro Luis Arce por daño económico al Estado” https://www1.abi.bo/abi_/?i=452014

[22] “Luis Arce asegura que la denuncia en su contra busca inhabilitar su participación en las elecciones”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYvPUk643w

[23] “Fiscalía boliviana acusa de terrorismo a Evo Morales.” https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/latinoamerica/fiscalia-boliviana-acusa-de-terrorismo-a-evo-morales-515054

[24] “Fiscalía boliviana acusa a Morales de terrorismo y pide su arresto,” https://www.hispantv.com/noticias/bolivia/470654/anez-morales-terrorismo-detencion

[25] “¿Quién es Arturo Murillo?”, https://www.pagina12.com.ar/239232-quien-es-arturo-murillo

[26] “American Convention on Human Rights,” https://www.cidh.oas.org/basicos/english/basic3.american%20convention.htm

[27] “Valiente resistencia en K’ara K’ara enfrenta represión policial y militar”, https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Valiente-resistencia-en-K-ara-K-ara-enfrenta-represion-policial-y-militar

[28] “Bolivia’s Coup President has Unleashed a Campaign of Terror,” https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/05/bolivia-coup-jeanine-anez-evo-morales-mas

[29] “Bolivia (Plurinational State of) Constitution of 2009,” https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Bolivia_2009.pdf

[30] MAS-IPSP tweet, July 8, rejecting OAS mission for September elections.

[31] “El MAS rechaza observadores de la OEA en elecciones bolivianas,” July 9, Telesur. https://www.telesurtv.net/news/bolivia-movimiento-socialismo-rechazo-observadores-oea-20200709-0002.html

[32] “31 US organizations denounce the brutal repression in Bolivia,” COHA. https://www.coha.org/31-us-organizations-denounce-the-brutal-repression-in-bolivia/

[33] ttps://www.telesurtv.net/news/grupo-puebla-rechaza-oea-observador-internacional-20200629-0085.html

July 11, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Stanford prof ordered to pay legal fees after dropping $10 million defamation case against another scientist

Mark Jacobson
Retraction Watch | July 9, 2020

A Stanford professor who sued a critic and a scientific journal for $10 million — then dropped the suit — has been ordered to pay the defendants’ legal fees based on a statute “designed to provide for early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Mark Jacobson, who studies renewable energy at Stanford, sued in September 2017 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for defamation over a 2017 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that critiqued a 2015 article he had written in the same journal. He sued PNAS and the first author of the paper, Christopher Clack, an executive at a firm that analyzes renewable energy.

At the time, Kenneth White, a lawyer at Southern California firm Brown White & Osborn who frequently blogs at Popehat about legal issues related to free speech, said of the suit:

It’s not incompetently drafted, but it’s clearly vexatious and intended to silence dissent about an alleged scientist’s peer-reviewed article.

In February 2018, following a hearing at which PNAS argued for the case to be dismissed, Jacobson dropped the suit, telling us that he “was expecting them to settle.” The defendants then filed, based on the anti-SLAPP — for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” — statute in Washington, DC, for Jacobson to pay their legal fees.

In April of this year, as noted then by Forbes, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Carroll Wingo, who has been presiding over the case, ruled that Jacobson would have to pay those fees. In that ruling, Wingo wrote that the Court

finds that the three asserted “egregious errors” are statements reflecting scientific disagreements, which were appropriately explored and challenged in scientific publications; they simply do not attack Dr. Jacobson’s honesty or accuse him of misconduct.

Jacobson appealed that decision, but Wingo upheld it in a June 25 order.

Jacobson could be on the hook for more than $600,000, the total of what the plaintiffs have told the court were their legal costs — $535,900 for PNAS, and $75,000 for Clack.

Paul Thaler of Cohen Seglias, which has been representing Jacobson, noted in comments to Retraction Watch that the judge had not yet ruled on how much Jacobson should pay:

The Court must now determine the level of attorneys’ fees to charge, which ranges from $0 to the amounts requested by the Clack and NAS attorneys (see legal fee requests and replies for arguments in both directions). Once that is done, Prof. Jacobson will decide whether to appeal the questions of whether the publication of false facts with provable “yes/no” answers (such as the false claim that a table has maximum values when it factually has average values) are indeed questions of fact or of scientific disagreement and whether legal fees are allowed in a case of a voluntary dismissal without prejudice.

Despite dropping the suit, and the judge’s ruling, Jacobson continues to insist in comments to Retraction Watch that there were false claims in the Clack et al paper:

This case has always been about three false factual claims, including two of modeling “errors” or “bugs,” claimed by Dr. Clack and published by NAS that damaged the reputations of myself and my coauthors. What has come out is that the Clack attorney has now admitted in a Court document that Dr. Clack now makes no claim of a “bug in the source code” of our model, despite Dr. Clack’s rampant claim throughout his paper that we made “modeling errors.” Dr. Clack has also admitted in writing that our paper includes Canadian hydropower, yet neither he nor NAS has corrected this admitted error in the Clack Paper. Third, all evidence points to the fact that Table 1 of our paper contains average, not maximum values, indicating that Dr. Clack’s claim regarding modeling error on this issues is factually wrong as well. Thus, it is more clear than ever that the three false facts published by the Clack Authors were indeed false facts and not questions of scientific disagreement. I regret that it was impossible to have these errors corrected upon our first request rather than having to go through this drawn-out process to restore the reputations of myself and my coauthors.

Clack told Retraction Watch that Jacobson’s comments were not an accurate reflection of the paper he and his colleagues published. (For Clack’s responses to each of Jacobson’s claims, see this PDF; for our attempts to fact-check Jacobson’s claims by asking for evidence, see this PDF.) Clark said:

We have had to repeatedly defend against this individual who is unhappy that his responses to critique were not well received and many scientists and the public did not consider his responses adequate to explain the errors and implausible assumptions in his original PNAS paper.

Clack also said:

Jacobson sued myself and PNAS for publishing a critique of his work that he didn’t like. He chose not to sue the entire author team, but rather only myself. To get published in PNAS, we had passed peer reviewed, and editorial reviews; one reason it took so long to publish. There was a lot of information in our paper and there were many, many problems (a lot were contained in the [supplemental information]). We had 21 authors who all worked on the paper, checked the working and agreed on its content and conclusions. Jacobson had an opportunity to respond concurrently with the release of our paper. We just noted the content of his (and coauthors’) PNAS paper and showed that there were assumption issues, errors, mistakes and wrong conclusions drawn from them.

Science “should be a platform that all ideas should be critiqued and examined,” Clack told Retraction Watch :

That is why it is a slow methodical process. No one should be above being held accountable for errors or mistakes. Humans are imperfect, and so mistakes will happen, it is the job of science to correct and build from them. If there are critiques people should publish them because in the end it will only slow human progress if they do not. It should be the institutions job to protect those that publish such critiques (which most universities do).

Clack called on Stanford and other universities to pay attention to what their faculty are doing in the courts:

However, further, it should be an area that Universities (such as Stanford) should look into more. They should scrutinize whether academics are weaponizing legal avenues to hold back contrary science to their own work. Everyone has the right to pursue legal claims, but there should be a process set up as university employees that if they pursue it around academic literature or work, they have to get approval from the governing body at that university. Otherwise, there could be academics or others who use legal threats to halt publication of works that might contradict their own.

For me personally, I had no institution to defend me, and I am very honored and proud that Dentons (my lawyers) agreed to help me with my defense, because Jacobson’s filings were substantial in word count.

Indeed, on page seven of her June 25 order, Wingo called one of Jacobson’s motions — filed at nearly twice the page limit the court allowed — a “particularly egregious” violation.

July 11, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

New evidence shows the FBI knew General Flynn was not ‘agent of Russia’ but prosecuted him anyway

RT | July 10, 2020

President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn was “not acting as an agent of Russia” by the FBI’s own determination, yet the Mueller probe was based on that claim and his legal odyssey still continues.

New evidence provided by the Justice Department to Flynn’s legal team this week, and made public on Friday as part of a court filing, shows that the FBI determined Flynn wasn’t a Russian agent, and believed he did not deliberately lie to agents during his January 2017 interview.

A handwritten document shows the officials believed there were no reasonable grounds for prosecution under the Logan Act, an arcane old law prohibiting US citizens from engaging in foreign policy.

After the Washington Post published fragments of leaked information from the FBI suggesting the opposite, however, Flynn was forced to resign in February 2017, and later that year faced perjury charges from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ‘Russian collusion’ by the Trump campaign.

What makes these revelations particularly egregious is the fact that the scope memo for Mueller’s probe, written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 and kept classified for years, cited the Logan Act as one of the predicates for going after Flynn.

The fourteen pages of additional evidence provided by the government on July 7 demonstrate Flynn’s innocence, the “absence of any crime,” as well as “government misconduct” in investigating Flynn and “prosecutorial misconduct in the suppression of evidence favorable to the defense,” his legal team said in a statement.

Flynn initially pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI, but later changed legal counsel and claimed prosecutorial misconduct. A steady drip of evidence from the DOJ ever since has revealed the plot to catch him in a perjury trap, the role of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok in keeping the case improperly open, and that Flynn did nothing wrong in his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – among other things.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against the prosecutors, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has refused to approve the DOJ motion to drop the case. Instead, he appointed a retired judge who had just denounced the DOJ in the Washington Post to help him challenge it as amicus curiae.

Flynn’s lawyers took their case to the appeals court, which ruled on June 24 that Sullivan had to dismiss the charges. He refused, asking for a full-bench (en banc) review, with Flynn and the government now given ten days to respond.

The entire process is without precedent in Washington, but is hardly surprising given the political implications of the trial. Mueller’s probe was supposed to get Trump impeached and invalidate the 2016 presidential election, and though it failed the mainstream media and Democrats continue to insist on ‘Russiagate collusion.’ As the new documents show, all of it rests on the prosecution of Flynn, and falls apart entirely if he walks.

July 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Blindness on Iraq War “Patriotism”

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF |July 10, 2020

An op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times by Democrat Tammy Ducksworth demonstrates that when it comes to “patriotism,” liberals are as morally blind as conservatives.

Duckworth’s op-ed goes after conservative Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who recently questioned Duckworth’s patriotism by suggesting that she didn’t love her country. Naturally, Duckworth, who lost her legs while serving as a soldier in the U.S. military in Iraq, took umbrage over Carlson’s attack and responded quite vociferously in her op-ed.

Much of the controversy involves meaningless exchanges that regularly take place between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. That’s mostly because both leftists and rights believe in the welfare-warfare state way of life.

But there is one aspect of Duckworth’s op-ed that deserves addressing because it so clearly shows that when it comes to war, the left-wing is as morally obtuse as the right wing.

Duckworth writes:

Even knowing how my tour in Iraq would turn out, even knowing that I’d lose both my legs in a battlefield just north of Baghdad in late 2004, I would do it all over again. Because if there’s anything that my ancestors’ service taught me, it’s the importance of protecting our founding values, including every American’s right to speak out.

So while I would put on my old uniform and go to war all over again to protect the right of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump to say offensive things on TV and Twitter….

What Duckworth obviously still hasn’t come to the terms with is that her military service in Iraq had absolute nothing to do with protecting the right of freedom of speech of the American people. That’s because neither the Iraqi regime nor the Iraqi people were threatening the freedom of speech of the American people.

What Duckworth obviously still doesn’t recognize is that it was the U.S. government that was the aggressor in the Iraq War. She was part of a military force — the most powerful in history — that attacked and then occupied an impoverished Third World country that had never attacked and then occupied the United States or even threatened to do so.

Yes, I know, U.S. officials called the operation “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” But that was just propaganda. The operation had nothing to do with bringing freedom to Iraq, any more than it did with protecting the right to Americans to exercise freedom of speech. The purpose of the operation was to replace Iraqi dictator (and former U.S. partner and ally) Saddam Hussein with another U.S. stooge.”

Moreover, let’s not forget that every U.S. soldier who served in Iraq, including Duckworth, was serving in an illegal war. It was illegal given that there was no congressional declaration of war against Iraq, as the Constitution requires. It was also illegal under international law because it violated the principle against wars of aggression established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

Let’s also not forget about the countless Iraqis who were killed in the process. By being deprived of their lives, they were also deprived of their right of freedom of speech.

Leftists and rightists can engage in their meaningless debates on “patriotism” all they want. Just leave out the part that holds that invading and occupying a country that has never attacked the United States protects the right of Americans to exercise freedom of speech because that just isn’t true. 

July 10, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Lithuania’s Television Commission Bans Broadcasting of Five RT Channels

Sputnik – 08.07.2020

The Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission (LRTK) has banned the broadcasting of five RT channels in the country, following the example of neighbouring Latvia, commission chairman Mantas Martisius said on Wednesday.

“Yes, we can confirm this. The decision will come into force after being published on the LRTK website,” Martisius said.

The ban is applicable to RT, RT HD, RT Spanish, RT Documentary HD and RT Documentary, and will go into effect on Thursday, LRTK chairman explained.

Last week, Latvia banned the broadcasting of seven RT channels (namely RT, RT HD, RT Arabic, RT Spanish, RT Documentary HD, RT Documentary, RT TV), saying they are all owned by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency Director-General Dmitry Kiselev, who is under EU sanctions. Notably, Rossiya Segodnya and RT are two different legal entities, RT is not chaired by Kiselev, and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan is not under any EU sanctions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has slammed Latvia’s decision to ban seven RT channels as a disgraceful and illegal move.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said on Tuesday that the government was mulling the possibility to ban RT broadcasting in the country.

July 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter Targets Accounts of MintPress and Other Outlets Covering Unrest in Bolivia

By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | June 29, 2020

Social media giant Twitter took the step of suspending the official account of MintPress News on Saturday. Without warning, the nine-year-old account with 64,000 followers was abruptly labeled as “fake” or “spam” and restricted. This move is becoming a frequent occurrence for alternative media, especially those that openly challenge U.S. power globally.

Immediately preceding the ban, MintPress had been sharing stories about Israeli government crimes against Palestinians, the Saudi-led onslaught in Yemen (both funded and supported by Washington), and about activists challenging chemical giant Monsanto’s latest plans. However, MintPess correspondent Ollie Vargas, stationed in Bolivia and covering the coup and other events there, had another theory on the suspension. Vargas noted that his account, along with union leader Leonardo Loza and independent Bolivian outlets Kawsachun Coca and Kawsachun News were all suspended at the same time. “There was a coordinated takedown of numerous users & outlets based in Chapare, Bolivia. Thousands of fake accounts appeared after the coup. We believe they’re being mobilized to mass report those who criticize the regime,” he said. Since the November coup, Bolivia has been the sight of intense political struggle, with MintPress one of the only Western outlets, large or small, extensively covering the situation (and from a perspective that directly challenges the official US government line). Vargas added that all those accounts suspended appeared in his Twitter bio.

In December, MintPress reported how the strongly conservative Bolivian elite is treating social media as a key battleground in pushing the coup forward, with over 5,000 accounts created on the day of the insurrection tweeting using pro-coup hashtags. With the new administration still lacking both legitimacy and public support, it appears the next step is to simply silence dissenting voices online like they have been silenced inside the country. Kawsachun Coca and Kawsachun News, located in the Chapare region, still not under government control, are among the only remaining outlets critical of the Añez administration.

As Twitter has developed into a worldwide medium of communication, it has also grown an increasingly close relationship with Western state power. In September, a senior Twitter executive was unmasked as an active duty officer in a British Army brigade whose specialty was online and psychological warfare. It was almost entirely ignored by corporate media; the one and only journalist at a major publication covering the story was pushed out of his job weeks later. Earlier this month, Twitter announced it worked with a hawkish U.S.- and Australian-government sponsored think tank to purge nearly 200,000 Chinese, Russian and Iranian accounts from its platform. It has also worked hard to remove Venezuelan users critical of U.S. regime change, including large numbers of government members. Meanwhile, despite detailed academic work exposing them, Venezuelan opposition bot networks remain free to promote intervention.

Facebook has also been working hand-in-hand with the Atlantic Council, a NATO think tank, to determine what users and posts are legitimate and what is fake news, effectively giving control over what its 2.4 billion users see in their news feeds to the military organization. Reddit, another huge social media platform, recently appointed a former deputy director at the council to be its head of policy.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that it was banning all positive appraisals of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general and statesman assassinated by the Trump administration. This, it explained, was because Trump had labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. “We operate under U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government’s designation of the IRGC and its leadership,” it said in a statement. This is particularly worrying, as Soleimani was the country’s most popular public figure, with over 80 percent of Iranians holding a positive view of him, according to a University of Maryland poll. Therefore, because of the whims of the Trump administration, Facebook began suppressing a majority view shared by Iranians with other Iranians in Farsi across all its platforms, including Instagram. Thus, the line between the state, the military industrial complex, and big media platforms whose job should be to hold them to account has blurred beyond distinction. The incident also once again highlights that big tech monopolies are not public resources, but increasingly tightly controlled American enterprises working in conjunction with Washington.

More worryingly, it is the tech companies themselves who are pushing for this integration. “What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century,” wrote Google executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Cohen in their book, The New Digital Age, “technology and cyber-security companies [like Google] will be to the twenty-first.” The book was heartily endorsed by Atlantic Council director Henry Kissinger.

After an online outcry including journalists like Ben Norton directly appealing to administrators, the accounts were reinstated today. However, the weekend’s events are another point of reference in the trend of harassing and suppressing independent, alternative or foreign media that challenges the U.S. state power, an increasingly large part of which is linked to the big online media platforms we rely on for free exchange of ideas, opinions and discourse.

On the incident, MintPress founder Mnar Muhawesh said:

Twitter’s ban hammer and censorship army of flaggers is an attempt to re-tighten state and corporate control over the free flow of information. That’s why it’s no wonder independent media like MintPress News, Kawsachun, and watchdog journalists covering state crimes like Ollie Vargas have been targeted in what appears to be an organized effort to silence and censor dissent. Twitter’s message is very clear: our first amendment is not welcome, as long as it challenges establishment narratives.”

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent.

July 3, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Ayotzinapa Case: Attorney General Orders Capture of 46 Public Officials

teleSUR | July 1, 2020

Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz issued 46 arrest warrants against municipal officials for their participation in the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, the State of Guerrero, on September 26, 2014.

“The Attorney General’s Office imputes to 46 officials from various Guerrero municipalities the crimes of forced disappearance and organized crime,” local outlet La Jornada reported and explained that the Office of the Attorney General had neither investigated nor prosecuted certain events when this case’s proceedings were carried out between 2014 and 2018.

Gertz also ordered the capture of the former director of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), Tomas Zeron, who was in charge of this case during President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration (2012-2018).

According to local outlets, however, he reportedly fled to Canada in March, escaping accusations of torture, disappearance of people, and obstruction of justice against him.

Zeron “already has an arrest warrant and an Interpol red card, for his international location and his extradition,” Gertz said.

Federal authorities are also seeking Carlos Arrieta, Michoacan’s former Security undersecretary, and Julio Contreras, a former member of the Ministerial Police.

During the Peña Nieto administration, Mexican authorities claimed that the criminal group Guerreros Unidos murdered the 43 missing students and cremated them in a garbage dump.

This version of events was known as “the historical truth”, a phrase that the former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam used to describe the investigations’ conclusion.

July 1, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

The real goal of the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign against Facebook has nothing to do with ‘hate speech’

By Helen Buyniski | RT | June 29, 2020

A deep-pocketed astroturf campaign has created the impression that Facebook users are up in arms about racism on the platform, but the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign is a naked political power-grab by the usual suspects.

The campaign emerged earlier this month and has gathered a huge amount of support from corporations eager to check the Black Lives Matter box and burnish their image. But it’s not clear if these companies have looked into who’s behind the initiative, or what their intentions are. Stop Hate for Profit’s organizers appear less concerned with stopping “hate” than they are with muscling their way into Facebook’s boardroom and seizing the power to permanently silence political opponents.

Stop Hate for Profit’s website is operated by the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group notorious for its heavy-handed censorship tactics that has bragged about its involvement in YouTube content purges and regularly smears critics of Israeli policy as froth-mouthed anti-Semites. Listed co-sponsors of the campaign include activist organizations Color of Change, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and a “media freedom” group called Free Press, which according to its mission statement seeks to “change the media to transform democracy to realize a just society.” In practice, that apparently translates to lending “free press” cover to ideologically-motivated censorship campaigns.

Because make no mistake, Stop Hate for Profit is ideologically-motivated, and its intention is censorship. All three of the aforementioned groups have at least one common financial backer: billionaire currency speculator George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Soros has made no secret of the fact that he wants Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg out of the top position, penning a series of increasingly unhinged op-eds earlier this year accusing the social media tycoon of colluding with US President Donald Trump to get the latter re-elected. Soros repeatedly demanded not only that Zuckerberg be removed from power, but that Facebook be stripped of its Section 230 legal protections, treated as a publisher and not a platform – and thus rendered liable for any and all user-generated content.

It’s not too surprising, then, that this group of Soros-backed organizations just happens to have set its sights squarely on Facebook’s profitability. By taking aim at the 99 percent of Facebook’s profits obtained through advertising, the campaign has already exacted a beating on the company’s stock price, which tumbled 8.3 percent on Friday. Facebook’s value has plummeted $56 billion since the campaign started, kicking Zuckerberg off the world’s three-richest-people list and making the platform’s investors very unhappy.

The more Facebook’s poor performance can be tied to the actions of the CEO, the more likely investors are to send him packing – and Soros likely laughing all the way to the bank.

Zuckerberg has stubbornly refused to fact-check political advertising on his platform, even as Facebook subjects all non-politicians’ speech to microscopic examination by ideological crusaders loaded down with their own baggage and conflicts of interest, allowing Trump and other conservative politicians to buy their way into voters’ hearts without fear that some Soros-funded fact-checker will ruin the moment. This – not some epidemic of “hate speech” – is the problem Stop Hate for Profit is most determined to fix.

The campaign’s answer to the question of “hate speech” on Facebook is multifaceted, but all the solutions it comes up with end with groups like the ADL gaining absurd levels of power within the immensely profitable platform. They demand Facebook submit to “regular, third party independent audits of identity-based hate and misinformation” – presumably to be conducted by the ADL or its affiliates – and refund money to advertisers whose content appeared next to material that was later yanked for violating terms of service.

And they want those terms of service to cover a lot more content – everything from “climate denialism” to “militia” are to be excised from the platform if Facebook wants its advertiser dollars back.

This isn’t the first time these same forces have united to demand Facebook preemptively shut down speech they don’t like under the guise of fighting “hate.” In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center – the ADL’s chief rival for the donations of wealthy liberals with enormous persecution complexes – urged tech platforms to allow “individuals and organizations” (like the SPLC, presumably) to “flag hateful activities” as well as “groups and individuals engaged in hateful activities” so that they might be speedily ushered off the platform. The SPLC’s partners in this endeavor? Color of Change, Free Press, and the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

Not everyone who’s signed on to Stop Hate for Profit is necessarily in it for the censorship, of course. Some corporations no doubt think they’re actually doing something good. But ironically, some of the participants don’t appear to actually be pulling their ads from Facebook at all, as Gizmodo discovered last week. Companies eager to be seen as taking a stand against Facebook have pulled their most obvious ads, but apparently left in place advertising deals through the Facebook Audience Network, which displays ads targeted based on Facebook activity across third-party apps, or continue to advertise with Facebook subsidiary Instagram.

It’s only fitting that a campaign that is at its heart a pantomime of caring about marginalized groups should be met by a pantomime of corporate activism from its real targets – Facebook’s investors. Soros has spoken, will Zuckerberg be pried loose from the CEO’s chair?

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

Read more:

Don’t make me repeat myself again! Soros threatens Zuckerberg must be removed from Facebook ‘one way or another’

June 30, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Zuckerberg loses $7.2 BILLION after corporate ad boycott pressing Facebook to police ‘hate speech’

RT | June 27, 2020

Plummeting Facebook shares have wiped out billions of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth. The impetus? Corporations such as Coca-Cola and Verizon have pulled their ads, demanding that Facebook censor hate speech.

Zuckerberg lost $7.2 billion, after Facebook’s shares fell by 8.3 percent on Friday, Bloomberg reported. The dive in value happened after Unilever, one of the largest advertisers in the world, joined the list of major companies that suspended their ad campaigns on Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram. At around the same time, Coca-Cola said it was also pulling all its social-media advertising for 30 days.

More than 120 corporations, including Verizon, Dove, Lipton, Hershey’s, and Honda joined the boycott organized by activists and civil-rights groups that demanded Facebook combat what they term hate speech and disinformation on its platform.

Responding to the criticism, Zuckerberg, whose remaining net worth is now being estimated at $82.3 billion by Bloomberg, has promised to ban ads with “hateful content.” The prohibited advertising will include materials that describe a specific demographic as “a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.” He also vowed to fight potential voter suppression, and to take down posts by politicians and government officials if the company deems them to be an incitement to violence.

While Zuckerberg did not explicitly mention the boycott, it was clear from the announcement he was trying to appease its critics. The US media landscape has been deluged by a wave of calls for advertiser boycotts that came in the wake of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. The action targeted primarily conservative outlets and speakers, and ended up being so widespread that it garnered the attention of US President Donald Trump, who considered making such behavior “illegal.”

Still, while Facebook has largely avoided explicit Twitter-style hounding of ‘wrong’ political opinions so far, the social-media platform has been frequently accused of censorship. Despite its proclaimed strive for “transparency,” Facebook is very vague on its policies about ‘forbidden’ content. It has been repeatedly caught flagging and removing certain posts for no obvious reason. One of the most recent scandals involved a colored version of an iconic World War II photo depicting a Soviet flag over the Reichstag – that was sanctioned on V-Day for showing “dangerous individuals and organizations.”

Other Silicon Valley giants, such as Twitter and Google-owned YouTube, have been waging an open war on comments deemed hateful or inflammatory. Twitter has been embroiled in a public spat with Trump, labeling several of his tweets as violating the company’s policy against “abusive behavior.”

June 27, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

How Venezuela helped defeat Canada’s Security Council bid

Trudeau_Guaido_1_800_445_90

By Yves Engler · June 26, 2020

Was Canada defeated in its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council because of Justin Trudeau’s effort to overthrow Venezuela’s government? Its intervention in the internal affairs of another sovereign country certainly didn’t help.

According to Royal Military College Professor Walter Dorn, “I spoke with an ambassador in NYC who told me that yesterday she voted for Canada. She had also cast a ballot in the 2010 election, which Canada also lost. She said that Canada’s position on the Middle East (Israel) had changed, which was a positive factor for election, but that Canada’s work in the Lima Group caused Venezuela to lobby hard against Canada. Unfortunately (from her perspective and mine), Venezuela and its allies still hold sway in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM or G77).”

The only country’s diplomats — as far as I can tell — that publicly campaigned against Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council were Venezuelan. Prior to the vote Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of foreign relations for North America, Carlos Ron, tweeted out his opposition: “With its deafening silence, Canada has de facto supported terrorists and mercenaries who recently plotted against Venezuela, threatening regional peace and security. The UNSC is entrusted with upholding the United Nations Charter and maintaining International Peace and Security: Canada does not meet that criteria.”

The post was re-tweeted by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who has 1.6 million followers, and numerous Venezuelan diplomats around the world, including the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN. Joaquín Pérez Ayestarán added, “Canada recognizes an unelected, self-proclaimed President in Venezuela, in complete disregard for the will of the voters. It also tries to isolate Venezuela diplomatically & supports sanctions that affect all Venezuelans. Is the Security Council the place for more non-diplomacy?”

After Canada lost its Security Council bid Ron noted, “not surprised with UN Security Council election results today. A subservient foreign policy may win you Trump’s favor, but the peoples of the world expect an independent voice that will stand for diplomacy, respect for self-determination, and peace.” He also tweeted an Ottawa Citizen article titled “Why Black and brown countries may have rejected Canada’s security council bid.”

For his part, UN ambassador Ayestarán tweeted, “losing two consecutive elections to the Security Council of United Nations within a 10-years period is a clear message that you are not a reliable partner and that the international community has no confidence in you for entrusting questions related to international peace and security.”

Over the past couple of years the Trudeau government has openly sought to overthrow Venezuela’s government. In a bid to elicit “regime change”, Ottawa has worked to isolate Caracas, imposed illegal sanctions, took that government to the International Criminal Court, financed an often-unsavoury opposition and decided a marginal opposition politician was the legitimate president.

Canada’s interference in Venezuelan affairs violates the UN and OAS charters. It is also wildly hypocritical. In its bid to force the Maduro government to follow Canada’s (erroneous) interpretation of the Venezuelan constitution Ottawa is allied in the Lima Group with President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who openly defied the Honduran Constitution. Another of Canada’s Lima Group allies is Colombian President Ivan Duque who has a substantially worse human rights record.

Reflecting the interventionist climate in this country, some suggested Canada’s position towards Venezuela would actually help it secure a seat on the Security Council. A few weeks before the vote the National Post’s John Ivison penned a column titled “Trudeau’s trail of broken promises haunt his UN Security Council campaign” that noted “but, Canada’s vigorous participation in the Lima Group, the multilateral group formed in response to the crisis in Venezuela, has won it good notices in Latin America.” (The Lima Group was set up to bypass the Organization of American States, mostly Caribbean countries, refusal to interfere in Venezuela’s affairs.) A Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East factsheet regarding “Canada’s 2020 bid for a UN Security Council seat” echoed Ivison’s view. It claimed, “Canada also presents a positive image to Latin American states, likely reinforced by its leadership of the Lima Group in 2019 and by its promise to allocate $53 million to the Venezuelan migration crisis.”

While it is likely that Lima Group countries voted for Canada, a larger group of non-interventionist minded countries outside of that coalition didn’t. Venezuelan officials’ ability to influence Non-Aligned Movement and other countries would have been overwhelmingly based on their sympathy for the principle of non-intervention in other countries’ affairs and respect for the UN charter.

The Liberals’ policy towards Venezuela has blown up in its face. Maduro is still in power. Canada’s preferred Venezuelan politician, Juan Guaidó, is weaker today than at any point since he declared himself president a year and a half ago. And now Venezuela has undermined the Liberals’ effort to sit on the Security Council.

Will Canada’s defeat at the UN spark a change in its disastrous Venezuela policy?

June 26, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

So it wasn’t ‘by the book’? Strzok notes reveal Obama & Biden were involved in FBI going after General Flynn

RT | June 24, 2020

New evidence shows that the decision to send the FBI after General Michael Flynn, president-elect Donald Trump’s top adviser, came from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and wasn’t “by the book” at all.

Biden was the one to raise the Logan Act, while Obama instructed FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to have “the right people” on the case during a White House meeting, according to a handwritten note from FBI Agent Peter Strzok.

The note was provided by the DOJ earlier this week to Flynn’s attorneys, who submitted it to the court as evidence on Wednesday.

While Strzok’s hard-to-read note does not mention names, it refers to people by letters – P for president, VP for vice-president, DAG for Yates, D for Director Comey, etc. – according to the court filing.

The Logan Act is an old law that bans private citizens from conducting foreign policy, but it did not apply to Flynn, since he was an incoming national security adviser to the president-elect. Even Comey admitted that his telephone conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak “appear legit[imate],” but was nonetheless told to pursue a case, according to Strzok’s note.

This directly contradicts the narrative about the meeting put forth by Obama’s security adviser Susan Rice, who wrote a strange memo to herself on the eve of Trump’s inauguration repeatedly saying that Obama wanted the investigation to be “by the book.”

Strzok’s note is undated, but the filing says it appears to be referring to a meeting on January 4, 2017 – the same date Strzok intervened to keep the FBI background case against Flynn open, though it had been scheduled to close due to lack of evidence of any wrongdoing. Strzok would later be one of the agents to interview Flynn, and admitted in texts to heavily editing the memorandum of that interview – which has not been made available as evidence.

Earlier in the day, the Washington, DC Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the federal judge in charge of Flynn’s case to immediately agree to the government motion to drop the charges. Last month, Judge Emmet Sullivan responded to the DOJ motion to dismiss charges – in light of evidence revealing the prosecution of Flynn was improperly predicated – by appointing a hostile ex-judge to evaluate the motion and hiring a private attorney to represent himself, at taxpayers’ expense. Flynn’s team reacted by seeking a writ of mandamus from the appeals court.

Flynn was the first casualty of the ‘Russiagate’ probe targeting Trump for alleged “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election. The adviser was forced to resign after less than two weeks on the job, after the Washington Post accused him of lying to the FBI based on yet-unidentified leaks. He was charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in late 2017, and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI under pressure, but has been fighting the charges after getting a new legal counsel in 2018.

President Trump reacted to the news by wondering if Comey and the FBI, or Mueller and his prosecutors, or Obama and Biden, will apologize to Flynn and others caught up in the probe.

Mueller’s investigation ended in May 2019 finding no evidence of any collusion anywhere, forcing Democrats to claim Trump had abused power by withholding aid from Ukraine as a pretext to impeach him.

June 24, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »