By Johanna Ross | December 13, 2019
Overnight the electoral map of the UK has changed significantly. Scotland is once again bathed in a sea of yellow, as England has been shrouded in blue. With the Scottish National Party obtaining 45% of the vote north of the border, and the Conservatives only 25% it is clear not only is there no mandate for Brexit in Scotland, but as leader Nicola Sturgeon has said, there is now very much a mandate for holding a second referendum on Scottish Independence.
England, on the other hand has put its support resoundingly behind Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his mantra of ‘Get Brexit Done’. With a remarkable 364 seats, as opposed to Labour’s 203 – its worst performance since 1935 – he proclaimed that a ‘political earthquake’ had occurred and that he would end all the squabbling of the last few years he would take the country out of the EU ‘no ifs and no buts’. This was a message that appealed to the majority, clearly sickened by the deadlock of Brexit. Despite the radical spending programme proposed by the Labour party, this election ended up being, as it was promoted, all about Brexit.
And this takes us to the broader context of what is in fact happening in the UK. Indeed, it’s important to see this election in the wider European political landscape. This was not just a Conservative party win, but a victory for nationalism. Not just Scottish Nationalism, but English Nationalism under the banner of Brexit, and Welsh and Irish Nationalism. For the first time ever, Northern Ireland elected more Nationalist MPs than Unionist, in what was also, like Scotland, an anti-Brexit vote, which will spur on more talk of Irish reunification. Welsh Nationalist party Plaid Cymru also held on to its four seats in Wales.
So while it may be portrayed as a landslide victory for the Conservatives, this election more than ever has shown up the cracks forming in the Union. Scottish Nationalism appears to be on an irreversible path to independence, with the question now being not if there will be a referendum on independence, but when. The strong Remain vote up north has only boosted the case for leaving the UK, as Scotland places more importance on being part of Europe, than being part of Britain. England, for its part, has clearly put more emphasis on being out of Europe, than it has on retaining the Union.
Indeed, looking at the western world in general, the popularity of nationalist and right-wing parties is undisputedly on the rise. The AfD in Germany, the National Front in France or Vox in Spain – these parties are all gaining popularity, just as Trump has in the US. And together with Johnson’s Conservatism, they all have something in common, that ‘populist’ appeal that really gets its message across. For regardless of their party leaders’ sins (Boris Johnson has been repeatedly been lambasted as a liar, racist, and misogynist), they have not been enough to deter voters, for whom clearly the nation state is what matters most.
There’s no doubt that Brexit has been a shock for the EU. Arguably Britain had always been a hesitant member, refusing to join the Euro, or join the Schengen zone (which allows borderless travel between states); it never quite developed that European mindset. But the Brexit vote took EU politicians by surprise, sending shockwaves across a Union already under pressure from Eurosceptic parties. They will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief in Brussels that the Brexit stalemate will now be broken with Boris Johnson’s parliamentary majority – finally a deal can be passed – but the reality that one of their major players finally leaving must be making them nervous.
Boris Johnson put faith in the people, and the gamble paid off. But whether he appreciates the real seismic consequences of this ‘political earthquake’ is another question. For cracks are not only emerging between Britain and Europe, but across the United Kingdom itself. It’s the price to be paid for Brexit.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
December 13, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | European Union, Ireland, Scotland, UK, Wales |
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After more than two months of mobilizations against the policies of right-wing President Sebastian Piñera, sectors of the population took to the streets Tuesday in what was called “March for the Eyes of Chile,” in commemoration of the International Human Rights day.
The Chilean people denounced the government’s excessive violence after 352 people lost their vision partially or totally during the violent repression to social protests. Organizations defending the rights of peoples mobilized to the meeting point for protesters at the renamed ‘Plaza of Dignity.’
The main objective of the march was to denounce the violent repression by police that until Dec. 6, caused 3,449 injured, including 2,767 men, 397 women, and 254 children and adolescents, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
Those attending the demonstration came with posters that had one eye drawn to remember the 352 people who have eye wounds, of which 331 are from injury or trauma and 21 from bursting or loss.
The posters also show a message denouncing “the eyes of the people accuse the terrorist state.”
For his part, the Director of the NHRC Sergio Micco said that the organization has proven on countless occasions that serious violations of human rights have occurred in the demonstrations. “We are facing a situation of denunciation of serious violations of human rights… there are abusive and negative behaviors that are continually repeated such as excessive use of riot guns,” he commented.
The Director of the Carabineros, Chile’s military police Mario Rozas, announced the suspension of the use of pellets as an anti-riot tool, except in cases of “legitimate defense when it represents a death threat.”
The measure follows a study by the University of Chile that states that these pellets are composed of only 20 percent rubber, while the other 80 percent have different elements, such as lead. However, on Nov. 23, Al Jazeera reported that Chilean police continue to implement pellets despite the official suspension of their use.
The unrest in the South-American country was sparked by a government’s decision to increase metro fees [premised on reduced carbon energy] but quickly spread to hold other social issues such as income inequality and swelling costs of living. The state’s response to the popular grievances has since led to the death of 23 demonstrators while around 3,000 have been injured.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) along with numerous other rights groups condemned the constant violations of human rights by police and military against the population in Chile.
December 11, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Latin America |
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The Israeli occupation has committed 557 violations against Palestinian mass media during 2019 alone, the Government Media Office (GMO) revealed in a report issued on Tuesday.
Commenting on the report, GMO director, Salama Marouf, announced that Palestinian journalists are facing the “worst violations” by the Israeli occupation, noting that a number of them were killed, with some losing body parts or suffering from serious injuries.
The most recent Israeli violation, according to Marouf, was the Israeli shooting of the Palestinian photojournalist from the West Bank, Muath Amarneh, causing serious injuries to his eye leading to its removal.
Marouf also cited the Israeli closure of Palestine TV’s office in Jerusalem, after raiding it and confiscating its contents.
Marouf stressed that the Israeli occupation forces use “direct excessive force” to crackdown on Palestinian journalists and mass media, in order to undermine their coverage of the Israeli violations against the Palestinians.
Recounting only some of the Israeli violations against journalists, Marouf cited “the Israeli occupation forces beat them, insult them, hinder their work, arrest them, raid their homes, confiscate their equipment and impose travel bans on them.”
Marouf also described the Israeli pressure and cooperation with the owners of the different social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, which closed and disabled hundreds of Palestinian pages and accounts, as part of the violations against Palestinian media.
He called for bringing the Israeli occupation to court over its crimes against Palestinian journalists and mass media, and called for the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2222, which guarantees the protection of journalists.
December 11, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Attorney General William Barr on Monday disparaged the long-awaited findings of the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz into FBI conduct in the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Barr, in effect, accused Horowitz of whitewashing a litany of proven misfeasance and malfeasance that created the “predicate,” or legal justification, for investigating candidate-and-then-president Donald Trump on suspicion of being in cahoots with the Russians.
In grammatical terms, there can be no sentence, so to speak, without a predicate. Trump was clearly the object of the sentence, and the sleuths led by then-FBI Director James Comey were the subjects in desperate search of a predicate. Horowitz candidly depicted the predicate the FBI requires for a counter-intelligence investigation as having to meet a very low bar. The public criticism from his boss was unusual. For the tenacious attorney general, doing a serious investigation of how the FBI handled the Trump-Russia inquiry has become a case of no-holds-Barr-ed, one might say.
Lindsey Smacking His Lips
Particularly damning in Horowitz’s report was the revelation that the FBI kept the “Russia investigation” going well after countervailing and exculpatory evidence clearly showed that, in the unforgettable words of one senior FBI official, Peter Strzok, there was “no there there.”
As Sen. Lindsey Graham put it yesterday, FBI investigators kept running through STOP signs in hot pursuit of a needed, but ever elusive, credible predicate. At a press conference, Graham pointed to page 186 of the Horowitz report to call attention to one of the most obvious STOP signs FBI sleuths should have heeded; namely, the fact that the FBI learned in January 2017 that the primary sub-source for Christopher Steele’s “dossier” disavowed it as misstated and exaggerated — basically rumor and speculation. No problem: the FBI investigation continued.
Mincing no words, Graham called the FBI investigation into alleged Trump campaign ties with Russia a “criminal enterprise” that got off the rails. (Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of such a conspiracy.) Sparks will fly on Wednesday as Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pursues the matter in more depth when Horowitz testifies before the committee. Graham emphasized yesterday that the general goal is to ensure that such a “criminal enterprise” does not happen again.
He added that one of the ways to prevent a recurrence is to make sure “those who took the law into their own hands need to pay a price.” Uh-oh. I cannot remember the last time leaders of the “national-security state” had to pay a price.
Barr: ‘Thinnest of Suspicions’
Barr took unusually strong public issue with Horowitz’s conclusion that there was adequate reason to mount an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign and suspected ties to Russia. Barr issued a formal statement asserting that the Horowitz report “now makes it clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr picked to lead what has now become a criminal investigation regarding how that FBI’s “intrusive investigation” was launched, issued his own formal statement of criticism, expressing disagreement with the IG’s findings as to the predication of the investigation and “how the FBI case opened.” Durham added that he had told the IG last month of this disagreement. In his statement yesterday, Durham spoke not of suspicions, but of evidence his ongoing investigation has already gathered “from other persons and entities both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”
Evidence, Not Just Suspicions
Both Barr and Durham chose their words carefully, and so did former CIA Director John Brennan in his May 2017 congressional testimony about his suspicions that Trump’s campaign might have been colluding with the Russians. Soon the spotlight is likely to turn onto Brennan and his carefully parsed testimony, which fell considerably short of qualifying as a predicate for investigation (but played a key role anyway).
On May 23, 2017, Brennan told Congress:
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
CNN’s coverage of Brennan’s testimony is even more revealing (of CNN’s bias) in retrospect.
Moreover, Brennan famously told Congress, he doesn’t deal with evidence. That was what Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy was wondering about, when he grilled the former CIA director, also on May 23, 2017, on what evidence he had provided to the FBI to catalyze its investigation of the alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
Brennan replied: “I don’t do evidence.”
The best Brennan could do was start out by repeating his well-rehearsed statement, later contradicted by Mueller’s report: “I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign,” adding that “that required further investigation by the Bureau to determine whether or not U.S. persons were actively conspiring, colluding with Russian officials.”
Media Treatment
Referring to the Horowitz report yesterday, Law Professor John Turley noted:
“Despite this shockingly damning report, much of the media is reporting only that Horowitz did not find it unreasonable to start the investigation, and ignoring a litany of false representations and falsifications of evidence to keep the secret investigation going. Nothing was found to support any of those allegations, and special counsel Robert Mueller also confirmed there was no support for collusion and conspiracy allegations repeated continuously for two years by many experts and members of Congress.”
And yet “debunking” is the name of the game. A New York Times headline this morning read, “Report on F.B.I. Russia Inquiry Finds Serious Errors but Debunks Anti-Trump Plot.” And an “analysis” article by Mark Mazzetti was titled: “Another Inquiry Doesn’t Back Up Trump’s Charges. So, on to the Next.”
Mazzetti writes:
“Engage in a choreographed campaign of presidential tweets, Fox News appearances and fiery congressional testimony to create expectations about finding proof of a “deep state” campaign against Mr. Trump. And then, when the proof does not emerge, skew the results and prepare for the next opportunity to execute the playbook.
“That opportunity has arrived in the form of an investigation by a Connecticut prosecutor [Durham] ordered this year by Attorney General William P. Barr — and the president and his allies are now predicting it will be the one to deliver damning evidence that the F.B.I., C.I.A. and even close American allies conspired against Mr. Trump in the 2016 election.”
Horowitz Report an ‘Appetizer?’
Mazzetti goes on to express doubt “that Mr. Durham will exhume any information that will fundamentally change the understanding of what happened in 2016.” Maybe, maybe not. It is a safe bet, though, that President Trump has better insight into this. According to Mazzetti, Trump recently had been playing down expectations about the Horowitz inquiry — indicating it was only an appetizer for what’s to come. “I do think the big report to wait for is going to be the Durham report,” he said. “That’s the one that people are really waiting for.”
The president may be expecting Mueller-inquiry-type vindication once Durham’s investigation is complete. If that proves to be the case and Trump receives post-impeachment acquittal from the Senate, as expected, he may be able to parlay that into four more years, a sobering thought.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer, then a CIA analyst for 27 years. He prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and in retirement co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
December 11, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | CIA, FBI, United States |
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To understand just how shoddy the FBI’s work was in securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign, you only need to read an obscure attachment to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report.
Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.
The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.
A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: “Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is
inaccurate.”
For those who don’t speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.
To put that in perspective, former Trump aides Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos were convicted of making single false statements to the bureau. One went to jail already, and the other awaits sentencing.
The FBI made nine false statements to the court.
And the appendix shows the FBI made another nine factual assertions that did not match the supporting evidence in the file. In another words, the bureau was misleading on nine other occasions.
The vast majority of remaining Woods violations — 33 in total — involved failing to provide any evidence in the Woods procedure backing up assertion in the FISA warrant application.
That’s serious too since the sole purpose of the Wood procedures is to ensure all evidence cited in a FISA application is documented as accurate and reliable so it can be trusted by the courts.
December 10, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | FBI, United States |
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Big Tech’s ties to the Deep State are everywhere, and we should be concerned
I wrote a short piece a few days ago about Reddit banning users for posting the leaked NHS documents. (Spreading anti-Russian propaganda in the process).
Previously, we have also covered Reddit making politically motivated decisions – such as quarantining boards dedicated to Donald Trump and 9/11.
It turns out there’s a very simple explanation for that, Reddit’s “director of policy” was previously in the pay of the US Deep State.
This was brought to our attention by Ian56 on twitter.
In 2017 Reddit hired Jessica Ashooh as their “Director of Policy”. Her LinkedIn page shows her previous employment was “Deputy Director, Middle East Strategy Task Force” at the Atlantic Council.
The report on which Reddit based their decision to ban users as part of a “Russian campaign” was written by Ben Nimmo, who also works for the Atlantic Council (and the Integrity Initiative).
Essentially, Reddit has a high-up employee who was previously in the pay of the US Department of State (and possibly still is).
It’s a prime example of how the US (and UK) infrastructure create an authoritarian, highly-controlled state, whilst maintaining a veneer of “freedom”. There are other examples too.
A high profile, and obvious, one is Nick Clegg being hired by Facebook.
Facebook also hired Ukrainian journalist (and fascist sympathiser) Kateryna Kruk as “public policy manager”, she also has ties to the Atlantic Council. (A short while later Facebook started blocking links to OffGuardian ).
In 2017 Facebook hired Indian journalist Shivnath Thukral as director for public policy for India and South Asia. HIS previous employer was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), another US NGO, funded by the State Department.
In 2011 Google hired Suzanne Michel as director of policy planning, she previously worked as Deputy Director of the Federal Trade Commission.
Then, in 2018, Google hired Karan Bhatia as their Global Head of Policy, Mr Bhatia had previously worked for the administration of George W. Bush.
It all follows the same pattern of apparent independence concealing an inter-connecting web of control, all dedicated to furthering the same agenda and all being funded by the same central source.
The Atlantic Council is not officially affiliated with the US government, neither is CEIP, they are notionally independent. Likewise, Reddit, Google, Facebook et al. are supposedly independent companies, not in any way controlled by the state.
… and yet you follow the money and it always leads to the same place.
December 9, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | European Union, Russia, UK, United States |
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I am pleased to announce the publication of my latest collection of essays. The capsule description of the book carried on the pages of internet booksellers is as follows
“The essays in this book deal with major political, social and cultural events primarily in Europe and Russia during the period 2017 – 2019 in which the author was a participant or eyewitness and has personal impressions to share. Several of the essays are drawn from other genres including travel notes, public lectures and reviews of particularly insightful books on key issues of our times like immigration, Liberalism and war with Russia that have not received the broad public exposure they merit.”
However, there is much more to the story that has relevance to its potential readers set out in the Foreword shown below, starting with the several layers of nuance in the title itself.
Foreword
The title of this book has been chosen with care and a few introductory words of explanation are owed to the reader.
First, the notion of a “Belgian perspective” on international affairs may on its own seem peculiar. In what way, one might ask, can little Belgium, with its population of around 12 million have a perspective that is unique and worthy of consideration? In the same vein, what perspective on foreign affairs in general can a lesser Member State of the European Union have when the most powerful Member State, Germany, denies that it has an independent foreign policy and defers to Brussels, specifically to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who, formally, holds sole responsibility for these matters on behalf of the 500 million plus people from 28 nations? Indeed, in a recent interview relating to the publication of his latest book, the octogenarian former prime minister of Belgium Marc Eyskens pointed out that the rise of the EU Institutions has left national governments with a substantially reduced level of sovereignty and competence comparable to that of a major city rather than of a country.
Meanwhile and in parallel, as the seat of both the NATO headquarters near the Zaventem Airport and of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium marches in lock-step with its US-led allies. Belgium’s mainstream media, both television and print media, traditionally support whatever policy line comes from the EU Institutions and NATO.
There have been rare exceptions to this solemn loyalty to the consensus. In particular, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Belgium was one of the three “Old Europe” nations, alongside France and Germany, that joined Russia in openly rejecting US policy. For this the nation’s Prime Minister at the time, Guy Verhofstadt, paid dearly, being disqualified from appointment to head the EU Commission, for which he was a leading candidate at the time.
But the aforementioned facts constraining the political elites of Belgium are by no means imperative for Belgian society as a whole. Indeed, as I detail in several essays in this collection, at both ends of society, the high end in their dinner jackets and at the mass, man-in-the-street level, there is very little sympathy for the official foreign and defense policies and a lot of free-thinking going on.
All of which brings us to the question of who is the Belgian whose perspective is set out in this tome. The simple and direct answer is that I am that Belgian.
Readers of my articles posted in various platforms on the internet have seen me described in the past as an American and long-time resident of Brussels. Both statements were and are correct. However, in August 2017 I also became a naturalized Belgian. This ‘second birth’ was more than seven years in gestation. After its successful culmination, I found myself increasingly involved in intra-Belgian, intra-European politics. Consequently, I have written with greater frequency on issues that are specific to the Old Continent. By their nature, these articles have not been picked up and disseminated via the internet platforms based in the United States by which readers know me best. Moreover, in my new guise I have written some of these articles or speeches in French so as to better reach prospective readers around me where I live and practice politics. These materials are also republished in this volume.
Notwithstanding the new elements, as in my preceding three collections of “nonconformist” essays published between 2013 and 2017, the major part of my writings is focused on present-day Russia and its relations with the United States and Europe. Russia is my main field of interest and expertise coming both from book learning and from life experience as a frequent visitor to the country over many decades and also as someone who has both lived and worked there for eight years beginning in 1994. That is something very few of our commentators in the West can say before they launch into ill-informed vitriolic attacks on the “Putin regime” and Russians as a people.
Since all of the essays presented here have been published on the internet in one way or another, it is legitimate to ask what is the added value of republishing them as a book. There are several answers to that question, ranging from the superficial but adequate to an answer that goes to the heart of how I see my social role in writing these pieces.
The superficial but adequate explanation is that everything is transient, nothing more so than the internet, where digital platforms are here today, gone tomorrow, where even one’s own blog site lasts no longer than the latest annual fees payment. And while e-books may be no more durable than the publishing company maintaining and distributing the digital files, physical books deposited in libraries will be accessible to the curious public and to researchers as long as the human race continues on its way, which may or may not be eons depending on your degree of pessimism inspired by this and similar works by my fellow “dissidents” on international affairs.
The deeper explanation is that influencing public opinion towards détente, towards self-preservation and away from confrontation with Russia that can easily end in catastrophe presently does not appear to be actionable. This is so for banal but understandable reasons that have to do firstly with the way the United States is governed internally and secondly how the United States rules over “the free world.”
Over the past twenty years or more, repeated polls taken by Pew and other research institutions have shown that the American public does not support foreign military adventures or a world gendarme role for their country. However, the political establishment pays no heed whatsoever to this clear disposition of the electorate just as the views of the electorate on a great many other issues are ignored by Congress and by the Executive branch. This follows from the financial dimension of getting and staying in power. By campaign funding and lobbying, a tiny number of exceedingly wealthy individuals and corporations effectively make policy at the federal level, and accommodation with the world is not on their agenda.
Meanwhile, whether as a result of awareness of their powerlessness or for other reasons, the broad American public is apathetic as concerns foreign policy. People just don’t want to disturb their peace of mind by contemplating the aggressive, bullying behavior of their government on the international stage. “Our boys” are not being killed abroad in significant numbers. The budgeted military expenses of the USA are being financed by others who buy Washington’s Treasury notes. There is nothing to force a reckoning with what is being done in the name of America abroad. Least of all, with respect to Russia, which has taken with surprising equanimity the sanctions and other punishments meted out to them over their alleged bad conduct in Ukraine and Syria, over their alleged meddling in American and European elections. The notion that the West might be crossing their red lines at some point, that the economic and informational war might spill over into kinetic war that escalates quickly – such thoughts could not be further from the minds of people in the States or in Western Europe, including those who take a real interest in public affairs and think they are au courant.
This is not to say that the essays published here and similar writings by my comrades-in-arms have no readers. On the contrary, our works are republished by portals other than our own. They are referenced on social networks and attract considerable numbers of “hits,” meaning individual readers. Some of the essays in this book have reached an audience numbering in the tens of thousands. But so far the dry residue of this relative success remains inconsequential. No broad-based political movement championing my/our principles of détente has emerged. There are no demonstrations on behalf of peace, while there are American and worldwide demonstrations to fight for renewable energy and for programs to combat climate change, or to fight for gender issues and equality of pay.
So, why write? why publish?
This takes us to the question of self-definition and social role.
We are living through Dark Ages today, notwithstanding all the technical achievements of our science and technology and advanced medicine. At the moral, social and political levels, these are bleak times when “progressive” values trample upon traditional moral and ethical, not to mention religious values, when freedom of expression and other civil liberties have been gutted for the sake of public security and to serve demagogic purposes.
In this context, these writings are intended to be an eyewitness account of the prevailing moral and political decadence for the edification of those in future generations who will have their own battles to fight to safeguard cultural traditions and freedoms. In assuming this role of a chronicler, I seek to continue the work of those who passed this way half a century ago or more and who left behind their own writings of the day, which gave me spiritual encouragement and purpose when I came across them.
At the same time, I do not abandon the hope that my compatriots in America and now also in Europe will come to their senses and explore these writings and the writings of my fellow dissidents to find an antidote to the propaganda about the recent past and present being dispensed by government, by mainstream media and by all too many scholars in the field.
One straw in the wind was a July 2019 editorial in the hawkish, till now fanatically anti-Russian New York Times calling for a rapprochement with Russia before that country aligns definitively with China and recreates a global threat to American interests. Or I refer to the publication of an article co-authored by former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn in the September-October edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, another standard bearer of U.S. hegemony, stating in detail the existential risks we incur by having cut lines of communication with Russia and by entering into a new, uncontrolled arms race with that country. As the Chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services from 1987 to 1995, he was a leading figure in arms control negotiations. In the new millennium, Nunn has been one of the generally recognized “wise men” in the American political establishment, alongside Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker.
There is also an impulse for optimism coming from the latest declarations of French President Emanuel Macron, who is striving to assume leadership of the European Union’s policy agenda now that control is slipping from the hands of Germany’s Iron Lady, Angela Merkel in the waning days of her chancellorship. In his speech to French ambassadors following the conclusion of the G7 summit meeting in Biarritz on the weekend of 24-25 August, Macron stated very clearly that Europe must put an end to its policy of marginalizing and ostracizing Russia because the Old Continent needs to work cooperatively with Moscow if it is not to become a powerless bystander to the growing conflict between the United States and China.
Such signs of sobriety and concern for self-preservation suggest that all is not lost in the cause of détente.
For those who have not read my earlier works, I repeat here that my essays are often devoted to major events of the day, but are not systematic or comprehensive. I wrote only when I believed that I had a unique perspective, often from my direct participation in the event as actor or firsthand witness. I have not taken up subjects where all of my peers were piled up on the line or were basing themselves on secondary sources. I consider my own writings to be primary sources in an extended, autobiographical genre.
However, they do not constitute pure autobiography. That is something I am writing in parallel in a book devoted to Russia in the wild 1990s, which I saw at ground level as the country General Manager working from offices in Moscow and St Petersburg for a succession of major international producers of consumer goods and services.
* * * *
On-line bookseller Amazon has been fastest off the mark posting the book for sale in hardbound, paperback and e-book formats through its global network of websites including amazon.com, amazon.fr, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com.au, plus others in Latin America and Asia. Amazon competitor in the U.S. market, http://www.barnesandnoble.com, also offers all three formats. Both websites provide a ‘look inside’ option, facilitating browsing. For e-book purchasers in Europe, an alternative and cheaper vendor is http://www.bol.com. For U.S. purchasers, the least expensive vendors of the e-book at this moment are Barnes & Noble and the publisher’s own online bookstore: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/805594-a-belgian-perspective-on-international-affairs
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2019
December 8, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Civil Liberties, Militarism | European Union, Russia, United States |
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December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects.
During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents.
Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector,” but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden’s son Hunter.
On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting in Room 236 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was 59%-funded by Barack Obama’s State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization.
Also attending that meeting was Catherine Newcombe, attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice, where, among other duties, she oversaw the Department’s legal assistance programs to Ukraine.
By December 2015, Paul Manafort was undoubtedly considering approaching the Trump campaign to rejuvenate his U.S. political bona fides and mitigate the legal and financial difficulties he was experiencing at the time.
From the beginning of his association with the Trump campaign, Roger Stone, a long-time Manafort partner, made a strong case to Trump to bring in Manafort, who would officially connect to the campaign immediately after the February 1, 2016 Iowa caucuses.
Based on events occurring during the same period, were Obama Deep State operatives aware of Manafort’s intent and already intending to use his past questionable practices and links to Russia against Trump?
Such awareness of Manafort’s plans could have been obtained either through FBI surveillance, which began in 2014 and ended in early 2016, or through information provided by Manafort associates, for example, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort and was a FBI and Department of State asset, not a Russian agent as later painted by the Mueller investigation.
According to White House visitor logs, on January 19, 2016, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting of FBI, Department of Justice and Department of State personnel, which had two main objectives:
1) To coerce the Ukrainians to drop the Burisma probe, which involved Vice President Joseph Biden’s son Hunter, and allow the FBI to take it over the investigation.
2) To reopen a closed 2014 FBI investigation that focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal, Roger Stone.
That is, contain the investigation of Biden’s son and ramp up the investigation of Paul Manafort.
Again, according to White House logs, the attendees at the January 19, 2016 meeting in Room 230A of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building were:
Eric Ciaramella – National Security Council Director for Ukraine
Liz Zentos – National Security Council Director for Eastern Europe
David G. Sakvarelidze – Deputy General Prosecutor of Ukraine
Anna E. Iemelianova (Yemelianova) – Legal Specialist, US Embassy Kyiv and US Department of Justice’s Anti-Corruption Program.
Nazar A. Kholodnitsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor
Catherine L. Newcombe – attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice
Svitlana V. Pardus – Operations, Department of Justice, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine.
Artem S. Sytnyk – Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine
Andriy G. Telizhenko, political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington DC
Jeffrey W. Cole – Resident Legal Advisor at U.S. Embassy Ukraine, presumed to be FBI
Just two weeks after that meeting, on February 2, 2016, according to White House logs, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort (Note: one of the crimes of which Manafort was accused was money laundering, an area covered by the Department of the Treasury). The attendees were:
Jose Borrayo – Acting Section Chief, Office of Special Measures, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Julia Friedlander – Senior Policy Advisor for Europe, Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Michael Lieberman – Deputy Assistant Secretary, Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Scott Rembrandt – Anti-Money Laundering Task Force, Assistant Director/Director, Office of Strategic Policy, Department of the Treasury
Justin Rowland – Special Agent (financial crimes), Federal Bureau of Investigation
It appears that Paul Manafort became a vehicle by which the Obama Deep State operatives could link Trump to nefarious activities involving Russians, which eventually evolved into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Remember, the key claim of the follow-up Steele dossier, the centerpiece of the Mueller investigation, was that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was the focal point of a “well-developed conspiracy between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.”
Nellie Ohr, Fusion GPS employee and wife of Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, not only worked with Christopher Steele on the so-called Trump dossier, but, in May 2016, was the conduit of information to her husband and two Department of Justice prosecutors of the existence of the “black ledger” documents that contributed to Manafort’s prosecution.
Bruce Ohr and Steele attempted to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, efforts that eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could provide information to prove that Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia.
The surveillance and entrapment attempts of Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and others were designed to collect evidence about Trump without formally documenting that Trump was the target.
After the election, to cover their tracks, James Comey, representing the FBI and the Department of Justice, misleadingly told Trump that the investigation was about Russia and a few stray people in his campaign, but they assured him he personally was not under investigation.
They lied.
Donald Trump always was, and still is, the target of the Deep State, the left-wing media and their Democrat Party collaborators.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired US Army Reserve colonel, an IT command and control and cyber security subject matter expert and a veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com
December 7, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Ukraine, United States |
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One subject that congressmen and the mainstream media tend to avoid is the erosion of fundamental liberties in the United States as a consequence of the war on terror and American involvement in the Middle East. Some of America’s legislators apparently do not even understand that freedom of speech actually means that one can say things that others might find distasteful. The assault on freedom of speech has been accelerated through the invention of so-called “hate speech,” which has in turn morphed into “hate crimes” where punishments are increased if there is any suggestion that hatred of groups or individuals is involved. Some have rightly questioned the whole concept, pointing out that if you murder someone the result is the same whether you hate your victim or not.
Freedom of speech is particularly threatened in any situations having to do with Israel, a reflection of the power of that country’s lobby in the United States. At a recent town hall gathering, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) demonstrated how he and his colleagues run and hide whenever the issue of Israel is raised when he would not respond directly to a question over whether any criticism of Israel should or should not be protected under the First Amendment. Crenshaw is a Republican and generally reliably conservative, though he recently spoke out against the “For the People Act of 2019,” which he claimed “would limit free speech dramatically.”
A constituent specifically asked Crenshaw’s opinion about federal laws that require citizens in some states to sign a pledge that they will not boycott Israel if they wish to get government contracts or obtain a government job. The audience member also mentioned a law passed in Florida that bans anti-Semitism in public schools and universities, defining “anti-Semitism” as criticism of Israel. The constituent observed, “These laws are obviously flagrant and troubling violations of the First Amendment to free speech.”
“Will you honor your oath and denounce these laws here, now and forever?” Crenshaw was then asked. Crenshaw quickly fired back that the critic was “cloaking yourself in the First Amendment” to enable engaging in “vehement anti-Semitism.” Crenshaw then asserted that the questioner was “advocating the BDS movement,” a recent target of much of the legislation that the critic was addressing.
BDS refers to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which calls on people to protest Israel by pulling investments from and boycotting the country.
Israel is engaged in what might be described as a war with the objective of driving any and all criticism of the Jewish state out of polite discourse, making it illegal wherever and whenever possible. The Knesset has passed legislation criminalizing anyone who supports BDS and has set up a semi-clandestine group called Kella Shlomo to counteract its message. The country’s education minister has called BDS supporters “enemy soldiers” and has compared them to Nazis. Netanyahu has also backed up the new law with a restriction on foreigners who support the BDS movement entering the country, including American Jewish dissidents, several of whom have been turned around at the airport and sent home.
Israel has been particularly successful at promoting its own preferred narrative, together with sanctions for those who do not concur, in the English language speaking world and also in France, which has the largest Jewish population in Europe. The U.S. government under Donald Trump is completely under the thumb of the Israeli prime minister’s office, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently saying “our major focus is stamping out anti-Semitism.”
Sanctions already in place in Europe consist of fines and even jail time. The legal penalties come into play for those criticizing Israel or questioning the accuracy of the accepted holocaust narrative, i.e., disputing that “6 million died.” Even attacking specific Israeli government policies, like its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza every Friday, can be found guilty of anti-Semitism, which is now considered a hate crime in Britain, France, Germany, and, most recently, the Czech Republic. In Britain, where the Jewish lobby is extremely strong, a law passed in December 2016 made the UK one of the first countries to use the definition of anti-Semitism agreed upon earlier in the year at a conference of the Berlin-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
A statement from the British prime minister’s office at that time explained that the intention of the new definition was to “ensure that culprits will not be able to get away with being anti-Semitic because the term is ill-defined, or because different organizations or bodies have different interpretations of it.”
The British government’s own definition relies on guidance provided by the IHRA, which asserts that it is considered anti-Semitic to accuse Jews of being “more loyal to Israel or their religion than to their own nations, or to say the existence of Israel is intrinsically racist.” In other words, even if many Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the countries they live in and even though Israel is in fact intrinsically racist, it is now illegal to say so in Great Britain.
One should not be surprised, as the British government’s subservience to Jewish and Israeli interests is nearly as enthusiastic as is government in the United States, though it is driven by the same sorts of things—Jewish money and Jewish power, particularly in the media. A majority of Conservative Party members of parliament have joined Conservative Friends of Israel, and the Labour counterpart is also a major force to be reckoned with on the political left.
Here in the United States, the friends of Israel appear to believe that anyone who is unwilling to do business with Israel or even with the territories that it has illegally occupied should not be allowed to obtain any benefit from federal, state or even local governments. Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association for every American are apparently not valid if one particular highly favored foreign country is involved, as the discussion with Crenshaw reveals.
Twenty-seven states now have laws sanctioning those who criticize or boycott Israel. And one particular pending piece of federal legislation that is regularly re-introduced into the Senate would far exceed what is happening at the state level and would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison.
Israel, and its friends like Crenshaw, are particularly fearful of the BDS movement because its non-violence is attractive to college students, including many young Jews, who would not otherwise get involved on the issue. The Israeli government clearly understands, correctly, that BDS can do more damage than any number of terrorist attacks, as it represents a serious critique of the behavior of the Jewish state while also challenging the actual legitimacy of the Israeli government and its colonizing activity in Palestine. Much of the current hate crime legislation in places like Germany and the Czech Republic directly targets BDS, stating specifically that it is “inherently” anti-Semitic. In late July, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed its own resolution condemning BDS explicitly in a 398-to-17 vote.
Going hand-in-hand with the condemnation of BDS is a drive to maintain the exclusivity of Jewish suffering. In June, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (D-N.Y.) called border detention centers holding asylum seekers “concentration camps,” she was inundated with protests from Jewish groups that claimed she was denigrating the holocaust and “insulting victims of genocide.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum even published a statement objecting to comparisons between “the holocaust and other events.”
It is important for Americans to realize that Israel not only spies on the U.S., digs its paws deep into our Treasury, and perverts Washington’s Middle East policy, it is also attempting to dictate what we the people can and cannot say. And Congress and much of the media are fully on board, which is the real tragedy.
December 4, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Dan Crenshaw, France, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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The lower house of France’s Parliament has passed a nonbinding resolution equating criticism of the Zionists occupying Palestinian territories with anti-Semitism, defying warnings that such a move could serve to stifle the advocates of Palestinian rights.
The National Assembly passed the resolution on Tuesday, with 154 votes for and 72 against, various media outlets reported.
The resolution states, “Criticizing the very existence of Israel as a collective composed of Jewish citizens is tantamount to hatred towards the Jewish community as a whole.”
“Such abuses increasingly make anti-Zionism ‘one of the contemporary forms of anti-Semitism’ in the words of the President of the Republic,” it adds, citing French President Emanuel Macron.
The Zionist entity proclaimed existence in 1948 after occupying huge swathes of regional countries during a Western-backed war.
Right before the war, it had already gone on a campaign of ethnic cleansing that lasted until 1949, leading to the expulsion of between 750,000 and 850,000 Palestinians from their homeland while the Israeli regime was replacing them with a similar number of Jewish migrants.
Still using far-and-wide Western backing, the regime staged another wholesale war in 1967 that saw it seizing more chunks of land, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds, the Gaza Strip and parts of Syria’s Golan Heights.
Many Jews worldwide are opposed to the occupation of Palestinian land and reject the Zionist concept of Israel being a legitimate Jewish state, arguing that the Zionist entity has hijacked their religious identity so it could push ahead with its land theft agenda.
Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan applauded the French lawmakers’ approval of the resolution, urging Paris to take “practical steps” against the international pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations and later turned international. It is meant to initiate “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law” and end its occupation of Palestinian lands.
The French MPs’ move came despite earlier warnings by activists and rights organizations that such a resolution could work to block any criticism of the occupying entity.
In a letter to National Assembly President Richard Ferrand in October, 39 organizations said the resolution would compromise “defense of freedom of expression and assembly for groups and activists that must be allowed to defend the rights of Palestinians and criticize Israel’s policy without being falsely accused of anti-Semitism.”
The resolution would also “weaken the universalist approach” to combating all forms of racism,” the letter added.
As the French legislators were about to adopt the measure, a group of 129 Jewish and Israeli scholars signed a petition calling on the parliament to vote against the resolution.
The signatories said, “It is cynical and insensitive to stigmatize them (Palestinians) as anti-Semites for opposing Zionism… They oppose Zionism not because they hate Jews, but because they experience Zionism as an oppressive political movement.”
Speaking to France 24, James Cohen, a professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and one of the signatories, said that “by equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, you’re broadening the definition of anti-Semitism too much […] you’re going very far afield.”
December 4, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Emanuel Macron, France, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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It is supremely ironic that Pentagon officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution because they intentionally destroyed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution when they set up their “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the very reason the Pentagon established its system in Cuba, rather than the United States, was to circumvent and avoid the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, whenever someone was charged with terrorism or any other criminal offense, U.S. officials would secure a grand-jury indictment and then prosecute him in a U.S. District Court. The accused in the federal court system is guaranteed certain procedural protections, many of which were carved out during centuries of resistance by British citizens to the tyranny of their own government. Our American ancestors demanded that many of those procedural protections be expressly enshrined in the Bill of Rights so that everyone would know that federal officials would have to abide by them whenever they charged people with federal crimes.
Examples of procedural guarantees include no cruel and unusual punishments, the right to confront adverse witnesses, the right to counsel, the right to due process of law, the right of trial by jury, the right to be presumed innocent, the right to remain silent, the right of speedy trial, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to be free of coerced confessions, and the right to counsel.
After 9/11, the Pentagon established its own “judicial” system at Gitmo to try terrorism cases, as an alternative to the federal judicial system in the United States. Yet, one searches in vain for any authority in the Constitution for the Pentagon to do that. When one reads the Constitution, the intent of the Framers is clear: one judicial system — the federal system — for trying all cases involving the commission of federal offenses.
Contrary to what some people maintain, terrorism is not an act of war. It is a federal criminal offense. That’s why it’s listed in the U.S. Code, which enumerates federal criminal offenses. It’s also why terrorism cases have long been tried in federal district court. It’s also why the Pentagon is prosecuting terrorism defendants in its “judicial” system in Cuba.
The establishment of the Pentagon’s system now enables federal officials the option of sending people who are accused of terrorism into two different systems — one run by the federal courts and the other run by the Pentagon. Thus, if two different people are charged with participating in the same terrorism offense, one can be sent into the federal court system and the other can be sent into the Pentagon’s system.
The choice makes all the difference in the world to people who are accused of terrorism because the two systems are total opposites. The Pentagon’s system has destroyed the procedural guarantees that the federal court system still protects. There is no trial by jury in the Pentagon’s system; trial is by military tribunal. Torture and other cruel and unusual punishments are meted out in the Pentagon’s system, oftentimes before conviction. Confessions can be coerced and are admissible into evidence. Hearsay evidence is admissible, which nullifies the right to confront adverse witnesses. Defendants are presumed guilty and treated accordingly. There is no right of speedy trial; some people have languished in the Pentagon’s system for more than a decade without trial. In the beginning, the Pentagon wasn’t even going to allow its prisoners have lawyers, but the Supreme Court put the quietus to that plan by ordering otherwise. Even then, the Pentagon has secretly monitored communications between attorney and client, a severe violation of the attorney-client privilege that is sacred in the federal court system.
Again, this was all by design. The U.S. military has long been a conservative organization, and conservatives have long poo-pooed the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights as nothing more than ludicrous constitutional “technicalities” intended to let guilty people go free. After 9/11, the Pentagon decided that it was going to show how an ideal “judicial” system would operate, one in which such constitutional “technicalities” could be ignored.
In the process, America ended up adopting a “judicial” system that is very similar to those in totalitarian regimes. After more than 200 years of Bill of Rights protection, the fear generated by the 9/11 attacks enabled the Pentagon to figure how a way to successfully circumvent those protections. In the name of keeping us “safe” from “the terrorists,” the result has been a destruction of critically important parts of the Bill of Rights.
December 3, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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