The Deep State Breaks Surface
By Craig Murray | March 22, 2018
I confess I found it difficult to get worked up about the Cambridge Analytica affair. My reactions was “What awful people. But surely everybody realises that is what Facebook does?”. It seemed to me hardly news, on top of which the most likely outcome is that it will be used as yet another excuse to introduce government controls on the internet and clamp down on dissenting views like those on this website, where 85% of all traffic comes through Facebook or Twitter.
But two nights ago my interest was piqued when, at the height of Cambridge Analytica’s domination of the news cycle, the BBC gave it considerably less airtime than the alcohol abuse problems of someone named Ant. The evening before, the BBC had on Newsnight given the CEO of Cambridge Analytica the most softball interview imaginable. If the BBC is obviously downplaying something, it is usually defending a deep British Establishment interest.
It took me a minute to find out that Cambridge Analytica is owned by a British company, SCL Ltd, which in effect does exactly the same activities in the UK that Cambridge Analytica was undertaking in the US. I then looked up SCL on Bloomberg.
The name which jumped out at me of course was Lord Ivar Mountbatten, direct descendant of Queen Victoria and scion of the family closest friends with that of the UK’s unelected monarch. The only person listed by Companies House as having “significant control” – ie over 25% of the shares – is Roger Gabb, the wine merchant known for large donations to the Tory Party. I have now spoken to people who know him fairly well who, I must note in fairness, universally say he is a kind and very bright man, but with no technical input in the kind of work performed by SCL/Cambridge Analytica.
SCL is as Establishment as a company can get. The most worrying aspect of this is that SCL is paid by the British government to manipulate public opinion particularly in the fields of “Security” and “Defence”, and still more worryingly SCL – this group of ultra Tory money men seeking to refine government propaganda at the expense of you, the taxpayer – is cleared by the MOD to access classified government information.
I then did a news search on google for “Mountbatten” and “SCL” and it brought up zero results from corporate and state media. I then did a wider search not just of news sites, and found this excellent article from Liam O’Hare on Bella Caledonia. It said everything I had been planning to write, and probably says it better. Please do read it. Liam has actually done this to me before, getting there first. I suspect we may be the same person. Come to think of it, I have never seen a photo of us together.
PS Everyone of my generation will remember this joke. “What’s white and flies across the sea at 300mph?” We had a more robust attitude to free speech in the 70’s, and the maudlin deference to the “Royal family” had much less hold on the population.
Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared
By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | March 19, 2018
What prompted former CIA Director John Brennan on Saturday to accuse President Donald Trump of “moral turpitude” and to predict, with an alliterative flourish, that Trump will end up “as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history”? The answer shines through the next sentence in Brennan’s threatening tweet: “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe [former FBI Deputy Director fired Friday night] but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan
It is easy to see why Brennan lost it. The Attorney General fired McCabe, denying him full retirement benefits, because McCabe “had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.” There but for the grace of God go I, Brennan must have thought, whose stock in trade has been unauthorized disclosures.
In fact, Brennan can take but small, short-lived consolation in the fact that he succeeded in leaving with a full government pension. His own unauthorized disclosures and leaks probably dwarf in number, importance, and sensitivity those of McCabe. And many of those leaks appear to have been based on sensitive intercepted conversations from which the names of American citizens were unmasked for political purposes. Not to mention the leaks of faux intelligence like that contained in the dubious “dossier” cobbled together for the Democrats by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
It is an open secret that the CIA has been leaking like the proverbial sieve over the last two years or so to its favorite stenographers at the New York Times and Washington Post. (At one point, the obvious whispering reached the point that the Wall Street Journal saw fit to complain that it was being neglected.) The leaking can be traced way back — at least as far as the Clinton campaign’s decision to blame the Russians for the publication of very damning DNC emails by WikiLeaks just three days before the Democratic National Convention.
This blame game turned out to be a hugely successful effort to divert attention from the content of the emails, which showed in bas relief the dirty tricks the DNC played on Bernie Sanders. The media readily fell in line, and all attention was deflected from the substance of the DNC emails to the question as to why the Russians supposedly “hacked into the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks.”
This media operation worked like a charm, but even Secretary Clinton’s PR person, Jennifer Palmieri, conceded later that at first it strained credulity that the Russians would be doing what they were being accused of doing.
Magnificent Diversion
On April 6, 2017 I attended a panel discussion on “Russia’s interference in our democracy” at the Clinton/Podesta Center for American Progress Fund. In my subsequent write-up I noted that panelist Palmieri had inadvertently dropped tidbits of evidence that I suggested “could get some former officials in deep kimchi – if a serious investigation of leaking, for example, were to be conducted.” (That time seems to be coming soon.)
Palmieri was asked to comment on “what was actually going on in late summer/early fall [2016].” She answered:
“It was a surreal experience … so I did appreciate that for the press to absorb … the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb….
“But then we go back to Brooklyn [Clinton headquarters] and heard from the — mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press who work in the intelligence sphere, and that’s where we heard things and that’s where we learned about the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about; and how to process … And along the way the administration started confirming various pieces of what they were concerned about what Russia was doing. … So I do think that the answer for the Democrats now … in both the House and the Senate is to talk about it more and make it more real.”
So the leaking had an early start, and went on steroids during the months following the Democratic Convention up to the election — and beyond.
As a Reminder
None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison.
But she lost. And a month ago, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) threw down the gauntlet, indicating that there could be legal consequences, for example, for officials who misled the FISA court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and associates. His words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of yet other miscreants. “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said. “The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”
John Brennan is widely reported to be Nunes’s next target. Does one collect a full pension in jail?
Unmasking: Senior national security officials are permitted to ask the National Security Agency to unmask the names of Americans in intercepted communications for national security reasons — not for domestic political purposes. Congressional committees have questioned why Obama’s UN ambassador Samantha Power (as well as his national security adviser Susan Rice) made so many unmasking requests. Power is reported to have requested the unmasking of more than 260 Americans, most of them in the final days of the administration, including the names of Trump associates.
Deep State Intimidation
Back to John Brennan’s bizarre tweet Saturday telling the President, “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe but you will not destroy America … America will triumph over you.” Unmasking the word “America,” so to speak, one can readily discern the name “Brennan” underneath. Brennan’s words and attitude are a not-so-subtle reminder of the heavy influence and confidence of the deep state, including the media — exercised to a fare-thee-well over the past two years.
Later on Saturday, Samantha Power, with similar equities at stake, put an exclamation point behind what Brennan had tweeted earlier in the day. Power also saw fit to remind Trump where the power lies, so to speak. She warned him publicly that it is “not a good idea to piss off John Brennan.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post is dutifully playing its part in the deep-state game of intimidation. The following excerpt from Sunday’s lead article conveys the intended message: “Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. ‘This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI’s going to win,’ said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ‘You can’t fight the FBI. They’re going to torch him.’” [sic]
The Post, incidentally, waited until paragraph 41 of 44 to inform readers that it was the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility and the Inspector General of the Department of Justice that found McCabe guilty, and that the charge was against McCabe, not the FBI. A quite different impression was conveyed by the large headline “Trump escalates attacks on FBI” as well as the first 40 paragraphs of Sunday’s lead article.
Putting Down a Marker
It isn’t as though Donald Trump wasn’t warned, as are all incoming presidents, of the power of the Deep State that he needs to play ball with — or else. Recall that just three days before President-elect Trump was visited by National Intelligence Director James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Michael Rogers, Trump was put on notice by none other than the Minority Leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer. Schumer has been around and knows the ropes; he is a veteran of 18 years in the House, and is in his 20th year in the Senate.
On Jan. 3, 2017 Schumer said it all, when he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, that President-elect Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities:
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” Did Maddow ask Schumer if he was saying President of the United States should be afraid of the intelligence community? No, she let Schumer’s theorem stand.
With gauntlets now thrown down by both sides, we may not have to wait very long to see if Schumer is correct in his blithe prediction as to how the present constitutional crisis will be resolved.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as a CIA analyst under seven Presidents and nine CIA directors and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI?
By Coleen Rowley | Consortium News | March 18, 2018
The explanation from Andrew McCabe that he was fired merely due to his staunch support of his former boss and mentor, FBI Director James Comey, and the “Russiagate” investigation, does not pass the smell test.
Similar to the one that mainstream corporate media is spinning, McCabe’s explanation almost totally ignores the fact that it was the relatively independent Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) and the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR internal affairs) who recommended firing McCabe for his “lack of candor” on (the totally unrelated issue of) granting improper press access to the Wall Street Journal during ongoing FBI investigations of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s emails.
While the exact specifics of McCabe’s “lack of candor” – which McCabe denies – haven’t been released by the IG, it’s my own personal opinion that such official briefing of the press should not necessarily be a fireable offense as long as it’s justified to correct faulty media reporting and was not covertly done for improper political reasons. But technically, firing for “lack of candor” has long been the FBI’s “bright line” policy, ever since former FBI Director Louis Freeh tried to “clean up” the FBI in the mid-1990s when so many agents, including Special Agents in Charge, were caught lying about sex affairs, improper government credit card charges and drunk driving incidents – some amounting to reckless homicides.
But of course Freeh was rather hypocritical as he was himself involved in several instances of “lack of candor” including appointing his friend, Larry Potts, as Deputy Director. This, despite the fact that Potts had covered up his own role in substituting “rules of engagement” for the FBI’s “deadly force policy” during the Ruby Ridge standoff with (the arguably unconstitutional) “rules” directing the shooting on sight of any armed male.
The cover-up of Potts’ mishandling of Ruby Ridge came to light during the criminal investigations and prosecution of the FBI sniper who had subsequently shot and killed Randy Weaver’s wife while aiming at someone else. When Pott’s role was revealed, Freeh had to censure and demote his Deputy Director; but even then Potts wasn’t actually fired.
So it may well be that “lack of candor” sets too high a standard that no one, not even the angels, let alone FBI agents and their managing officials can live up to. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ lofty statement that the FBI’s integrity is its brand, may be nice, wishful thinking but like other self-promoting speeches going back to J. Edgar Hoover, it has never rung true based on the hundreds of unethical actions I witnessed or was made aware of.
A number of OPR officials themselves were always getting caught in various unethical, deceitful (and sometimes even illegal) actions, including their long systemic practice of employing “double standards” in recommending disciplinary actions, i.e. top ranking officials received light discipline while lower ranking agents got far more severe punishments for similar wrongdoing. In 2001, some of the FBI’s internal affairs supervisors became whistleblowers and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s disciplinary “double standards.” Although some remedies were eventually put into place, the IG also had to investigate some retaliatory fall-out.
In any event, McCabe’s calling his firing a “war on the FBI” doesn’t make sense considering it was the FBI’s own internal affairs office that recommended he be fired. (Note that DOJ IG Michael Horowitz was appointed by President Obama in 2012 and the FBI’s OPR is run by a career official originally appointed to that position in 2004 by then FBI Director Robert Mueller.)
Perhaps it would be more apt if McCabe had called it a war inside the FBI (and in Washington as a whole). Could the obvious chaos – some would say “bloodbath” – at all levels of government also be part of the “blowback” from 16 years of waging “perpetual war” (and from attendant war crimes and the internal corruption by which all empires rot)? As author Viet Thanh Nguyen noted about the 2016 election: “That sickness is imperialism… America is an imperial country, and its decay might now be showing. Empires rot from the inside even as emperors blame the barbarians.” Remember how wars have a way of migrating home.
Don’t forget that McCabe’s mentor, James Comey, as Assistant Attorney General had signed off on the Bush-Cheney Administration’s torture tactics. Special Counsel Robert Mueller (said to be “joined at the hip” with Comey) dutifully looked the other way, as then FBI Director, when the CIA’s torture program was instituted, allowing the atrocities to continue. It should also be recalled that Mueller helped the Bush-Cheney Administration to lie us into the Iraq War.
In early January, 2017 CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, NSA Director Michael Rogers and National Director of Intelligence James Clapper briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump on their “Intelligence Community Assessment” by which their agencies’ “hand-picked analysts” accused Russia of meddling in the election and which also included former MI6 spy Chris Steele’s “salacious dossier” accusing Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russians.
By prior plan, the three other intelligence directors left Comey alone in the room with Trump for Comey to confront the President-elect with the damning summary of Steele’s dossier (which Comey admitted was not verified) and, as icing on the cake, also warning Trump that these accusations would probably appear soon in the media.
Forgetful Democrat Party loyalists also should be reminded that John Brennan was termed the drone assassination and “kill list” czar (before being named CIA Director). As CIA Director, Brennan was hellbent on covering up and promoting CIA torture.
James Clapper, also not known for candor in having previously misled Congress about the NSA’s massive spying on Americans, has even been reported to be the source of the leak to CNN about the Obama intelligence directors’ January briefing that focused on the Steele dossier. It sure looks like there is plenty “lack of candor” to go around! And plenty for these officials to continue covering up. But as Cicero observed hundreds of years ago, “the law falls silent in time of war.” At very least everyone should be wary of partisan media spin since all of these war crimes and other deceitful, illegal actions made possible by the wars are fully bipartisan.
The real problem that most of the mainstream media don’t want to even mention is how unprecedented it was to have both Presidential campaigns under serious criminal investigation in the weeks before the 2016 election! In all fairness, even if these now-fired FBI Directors were trying to do the right thing – which would not be in line with their rather sordid track records – it wouldn’t really be possible to walk that political mine field without a faux pas one way or the other. Seen in that light, it’s possible to even sympathize a little with any FBI Director when the public corruption at the highest levels in Washington DC has become so bad (and fully bipartisan), that it’s hard to know where to start.
Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI special agent, division legal counsel and law enforcement ethics instructor who testified in connection with the 9-11 Joint Intelligence Committee’s Inquiry, the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and Department of Justice Inspector General’s investigation, exposing some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.
US Political Meddling is Very Real, Spans the Globe
By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 13.03.2018
The United States has spent over a year now leveling accusations against the Russian Federation regarding alleged political meddling during the 2016 US elections. While accusations range from everything including “fake news” spread across the Internet to direct ties to the administration of US President Donald Trump used to assist him into power, no evidence has yet to surface to prove Russia has meddled at all in America’s internal political affairs.
And while Russia certainly possesses a large and growing presence across the international media, concerted attacks against this presence stems more from the fact that decades of uncontested control over global public opinion by the US and Europe is now shifting toward a multipolar balance of power in information space.
In stark contrast to the whispers of shadows cited by the US and Europe regarding Russia, to begin understanding the scope of US political meddling abroad, one needs only to visit the US State Department and corporate-funded National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) own website.
Industrial-Scale Meddling
US meddling is so extensive that NED is broken into multiple subsidiaries (National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) and Freedom House) which in turn, are joined by parallel organizations such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, USAID, the UK’s DFID and many more.
The NED website is broken into several regions including:
Africa;
Asia;
Central and Eastern Europe;
Eurasia;
Global;
Latin America and Caribbean and;
Middle East and Northern Africa.
Within each region, NED lists its extensive funding for organizations and fronts in over 100 different nations around the globe.
Within each nation, NED funds between a handful to several dozen organizations posing as legal firms, media platforms, environmental groups and human rights advocates. They collectively create the components of a political machine used to pressure incumbent governments to heed US interests, or overthrow them if they fail to.
Because the NED and recipients of its funding are increasingly exposed as a form of political subversion, NED has opted to list its funding in some nations in very general terms, never revealing the actual organizations or individuals receiving US money. Many organizations in targeted nations refuse to disclose their funding to the public. Many even possess the gall to solicit public donations despite receiving (and concealing) extensive funding from the US government.
Asia
Entire opposition parties have been created by NED. One example is that of the current government in Myanmar headed by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD). From the party’s senior leadership, down to its rank and file, many NLD members are the direct recipients of indoctrination and training provided by programs funded by the US NED.
Current Minister of Information Pe Myint, was trained in a US NED-funded program hosted by the Bangkok-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT), which the FCCT would later deny despite evidence appearing on their own website confirming otherwise.
Elsewhere in Asia, the current anti-government opposition in Thailand consists of a small network of NED-funded organizations which dovetail into the US and European media organizations operating out of Bangkok. Small protests consisting of only 5-10 individuals are transformed into international headlines by NED’s army of media fronts including Prachatai, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, the Cross-Cultural Foundation and their partners in the US and European press as well as Western diplomats who all openly collaborate and coordinate daily across social media.
When agents of foreign interests are arrested, they are often accompanied by US, British, Canadian and European Union diplomatic staff to police stations.
In next door Cambodia, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) is led by Kem Sokha who previously and repeatedly traveled to Washington to openly conspire against the government in Phnom Penh before being arrested by Cambodian authorities. Ironically, while the US punishes Russia for mere allegations of political interference, it demands Cambodia release opposition members caught openly discussing their plans with opposition media to overthrow their own nation with America’s assistance.
Hong Kong, since returning to China after an extended period of occupation by the British, is also home to a large network of US NED-funded opposition aimed at Beijing. A similar hypocrisy is demonstrated by Washington as it protests the exposure and disruption of these foreign-funded networks of subversion Washington itself would never tolerate upon its own shores.
The Middle East
It is a fact, admitted by prominent US media platforms such as the New York Times, that the entire 2011 Arab Spring was a result of extensive preparations directed by the NED, its partners and subsidiaries.
After helping create the conflicts currently consuming the Middle East, NED now funds a variety of activities in nations like Syria to help prolong the conflicts. This is done by aiding and abetting militants fighting Damascus under the guise of providing humanitarian aid. It also includes assisting in the administration of territory seized by militants from Damascus’ control.
The nation of Iran, yet to be consumed by the violence sweeping across Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, is host to networks of both NED-funded and CIA-backed groups ranging from supposed activists, to militant groups aimed at the violent overthrow of the government in Tehran.
Eastern Europe
It was in Eastern Europe that NED perfected what is now called the “color revolution.” It is now admitted that the US NED and other US agencies played a pivotal role in overthrowing the governments of Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia. It was in fact the US-backed overthrow of the Serbian government in 2000 that Cambodia’s Kem Sokha cited as a model to replicate in Southeast Asia with US assistance.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NED’s color revolutions swept through Eastern Europe like a plague, consuming national sovereignty and bending the former Soviet territories to new masters in Washington, London and Brussels.
More recently, as Russia has begun to reassert itself and court nations in both Eastern and Western Europe, NED has stepped in once again to oust leaders who refuse to reduce or eliminate economic, military and diplomatic ties with Russia at Washington’s behest. A prime example of this includes the 2013-2014 Euromaiden protests in Ukraine. During 2013-2014, US senators including John McCain would literally take to the protest stages in Kiev to offer direct political support for the unrest which was spearheaded by Neo-Nazi political circles.
Russia
Remarkably, as Washington accuses Russia of political meddling within the United States, the NED openly lists nearly 100 subversive activities or organizations they are funding inside of Russia itself. Beyond what is listed on NED’s website is support the US and Europe is providing unpopular opposition figures like Alexei Navalny, the now deceased Boris Nemtsov, Yevgeniya Chirikova (NED-funded Strategy 31), Lev Ponomarev (NED-funded Moscow Helsinki Group), Liliya Shibanova (NED-funded GOLOS) and many others who have been repeatedly caught conspiring with American diplomats and financiers backing their subversive activities.
Were evidence to surface that Russia did any of the above forms of meddling, including maintaining entire stables of opposition figures who regularly filter in and out of the Russian Embassy in a targeted nation, it would be categorically condemned by Washington. Yet Washington flagrantly engages in overt political subversion, not just in Russia, but in (at least) 100 other nations around the globe, including nations the US is currently, outright occupying militarily.
For empire, what it fears the most is competition. It seeks to be the sole hegemon with all else beneath it. The US does not oppose political meddling in a sovereign nation’s affairs, it opposes the obstruction of its own meddling worldwide and seeks to eliminate others offering better alternatives to coercive subjugation by Washington, thus why it has singled out nations like Russia, China and others who are increasingly successful in doing just that.
For those tempted to join the bandwagon in condemning nations like Russia and China of political meddling, first they must recognize and account for the industrial scale meddling the US and its European partners are engaged in.
For those who are taking NED money worldwide in the belief that they are somehow advancing a liberal progressive agenda, particularly democracy, they must ask themselves what about a foreign nation meddling in their nation’s political affairs is “democratic” or conducive to the principles of self-determination democracy is built upon? One cannot honestly conclude that NED money is meant to support a nation’s capacity to determine its own destiny when clearly Washington is spending these vast amounts of money in order to determine it for that nation.
Saudi Arabia leads flood of arms imports to Middle East: Study
Press TV – March 12, 2018
A study shows weapons imports to the Middle East and Asia have soared over the past five years, with Saudi Arabia leading the steep rise amid its bloody war on Yemen.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms imports to the Middle East between 2013 and 2017 jumped by 103 percent compared with the previous five-year period.
Saudi Arabia is now the world’s second largest importer of arms after India. The kingdom registered a 225-percent rise in military purchases – almost all from the US and Europe – during the period, the study released on Monday said.
American weapons constitute 61 percent of arms imports to Saudi Arabia and British weapons 23 percent. During the period, the Saudis received 78 combat aircraft, 72 combat helicopters, 328 tanks and 4,000 vehicles, the SIPRI noted.
The same period, it said, saw Israel increasing its arms exports by 55 percent.
“The US and European states remain the main arms exporters to the region and supplied over 98 percent of weapons imported by Saudi Arabia,” it said.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia signed a preliminary deal to buy 48 Typhoon jets worth as much as $10 billion.
Saudi Arabia already operates more than 70 Typhoon jets. They have been used extensively in the Yemen war, and the deal is likely to spark outrage among rights groups and campaigners.
Arms remain the main component of UK-Saudi trade and the UK government has approved the export of $6.4 billion in weapons since the start of the war in Yemen, despite allegations that Saudi-led forces have committed war crimes.
The United Kingdom has increased its weapons sales by around 500 percent since March 2015, The Independent reported last November.
Last May, US President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia in his first foreign visit, signing a $110-billion deal to sell weapons to the kingdom.
“Widespread violent conflict in the Middle East and concerns about human rights have led to political debate in Western Europe and North America about restricting arms sales,” said senior SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman.
“Yet the US and European states remain the main arms exporters to the region and supplied over 98 percent of weapons imported by Saudi Arabia.”
More than 13,600 people have died since the Saudi-led invasion began, and Yemen has turned into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut US ‘democracy promotion’ racket
RT | March 7, 2018
The foreign policy establishment in Washington is crying foul after the Trump administration proposed to cut funding for organizations responsible for “promoting democracy abroad,” often in the guise of color revolutions.
The 2019 State Department budget request cuts the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) budget and separates it from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Funding for the institutes would be moved to the State Department, where NDI and IRI would have to compete with private contractors, according to the Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, who described the proposal as “an assault not only on their organizations but also on the pro-democracy mission they are dedicated to.”
“If implemented, the proposal would gut the program, force crippling layoffs and the symbolic meaning would also be shattering, sending a signal far and wide that the United States is turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values,” NED President Carl Gershman told Rogin.
“The work our government does to promote democratic values abroad is at the heart of who we are as a country,” Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), chairman of the IRI’s board of directors, told Rogin. The NDI board is chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
McCain actually wrote a letter protesting the proposal to the Office of Management and Budget in December. It was signed by four other senators, including McCain’s close ally Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida).
Trump’s people “just don’t believe it’s America’s business to push democracy abroad,” Rogin concluded.
His article quickly made the rounds of the Washington establishment circles, where it received praise from former CIA agent and failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin and New Republic columnist Jeet Heer. Nicholas Burns, who served as State Department spokesman under Albright, said the revelations will “make your blood boil.”
.@joshrogin: The Trump administration’s assault on democracy promotion can be expected to continue. Dictatorships are presenting their model as preferable for the developing world. Human rights abuses are rising. Basic freedoms are under attack. https://t.co/IRDT91JZAt
— Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) March 5, 2018
2. Democracy promotion in foreign policy had genuine bipartisan support from Carter to Obama. Trump has broken that consensus.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 6, 2018
This will also make your blood boil. The State Department is giving up on our historic support for democracy promotion that none other than Ronald Reagan pioneered. https://t.co/uQOpWnolme
— Nicholas Burns (@RNicholasBurns) March 5, 2018
It was Burns’s tweet in particular that attracted derision from critics of US foreign policy, such as journalists Glenn Greenwald, Chris Floyd and Jon Schwarz, and former diplomat Peter Van Buren:
This is the kind of blatant, jingoistic historical revisionism that the Trump era has made fashionable again. The idea that the US had been devoted to “democracy promotion” before Trump – and that this was pioneered by tyrant-hugging Reagan – is simply laughable: https://t.co/JrVqWt3CP7
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 6, 2018
Oh, Mr. Burns, do tell us more about Reagan’s “democracy promotion” with Rios Montt. And did Reagan have a special aide to follow behind him and mop up the innocent blood dripping – pouring – from his hands? Oh, tell us the glorious story, Mr. Burns!
— Chris Floyd (@empireburlesque) March 6, 2018
The confusing thing about Harvard, Yale, etc. is that the job of people working there in the hard sciences actually is to describe reality accurately, whereas the job of many humanities professors like Nicholas Burns is to lie about reality https://t.co/e5EQhQfL5O
— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) March 6, 2018
Nicky, Nicky… no more day drinking unless you’re going on CNN. Democracy promotion in Nicaragua, Salvador, Guatemala, Lebanon… or maybe Iraq 3x, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya? What ARE you talking about? https://t.co/D3t2TknjzS
— Peter Van Buren (@WeMeantWell) March 6, 2018
As well as a number of rank-and-file Twitterati:
Libya thanks you for their US installed democracy. The slave market was a bit of a surprise and the fact that there are three waring factions all claiming to be the government, but I’m sure you know what’s best.
— Kropotkin (@DoctorKropotkin) March 7, 2018
Democracy! Promoted! pic.twitter.com/hXnhJsHuxi
— B (@balvertos) March 7, 2018
The NED was founded in 1983, under the Reagan administration. It is theoretically a non-governmental organization, though the bulk of its funding is provided by the US government and American taxpayers. The status has given NED and its institutes plausible deniability against accusations that the US has been meddling in the politics of other countries.
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” one of the endowment’s founders, Allen Weinstein, told the Washington Post in September 1991.
One example is the wave of “color revolutions,” starting from Serbia in 2000 to the “Arab Spring” revolts of 2011. Ukraine was subjected to this twice, in 2004 and in 2014. During the unrest in Kiev in November 2004, The Guardian’s Ian Traynor described the process, while heaping praise on the people behind it.
“The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections,” Traynor wrote. “The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute.”
Though campaigns funded by all these external actors are more astroturf than grassroots, there were few objections, as it was all in the name of democracy.
Traynor concluded his 2004 story by saying the “places to watch” were Moldova and Central Asia. Sure enough, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan went through a “Pink revolution” in February 2005, while the “Grape revolution” took place in Moldova in April 2009.
The Washington establishment’s obsession with democracy may also be explained by the belief that any non-democratic government is automatically anti-Western, as Luis Fleischman of the neoconservative Center for Security Policy argued last month.
If the regime is pro-American, however, it doesn’t matter whether it’s actually democratic or not. On Tuesday, the director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Mark Dubowitz tweeted that “inclusive authoritarianism” might be a better fit for Middle Eastern countries, as long as they were “tolerant, respectful of individual liberties & minority rights & pro-American.”
Btw, I said a more “inclusive authoritarianism” *might* be better alternative. Tolerant, respectful of individual liberties & minority rights & pro-American. I suggested should be discussed. So spare me the invective & explain why worse than failed M/E democracies. https://t.co/yQJWKQ5V3z
— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) March 7, 2018
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NYPD Exposed: Hundreds of Officers Who Lied, Assaulted People Kept Jobs
Sputnik – 05.03.2018
Secret files leaked from the New York Police Department (NYPD) have revealed that more than 300 NYPD officers who lied, cheated, stole from or assaulted civilians from 2011 through 2015 were allowed to stay on the force.
BuzzFeed News published an expose Monday based on information garnered from filtering through hundreds of pages of secret international NYPD files that were leaked to the news organization by an anonymous source. The file content was fact-checked by making more than 100 phone calls, interviewing prosecutors, reviewing court records and even visiting officers’ homes.
At least 50 staffers allegedly lied on official reports or under oath and 38 were found guilty of using excessive force by an internal police tribunal. In addition, 57 staffers were found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol and 71 were charged with ticket-fixing, a practice in which public officials dismiss or destroy traffic tickets to help family members or friends. One officer even threatened to kill someone, while another sexually harassed a fellow officer. At least 24 of the staffers were allegedly involved in harassing students or selling drugs in schools.
According to BuzzFeed, one officer in the Bronx was accused of atrociously beating a man with his police baton after the victim verbally insulted him in 2009. The man ended up with a deep wound that required 12 staples to close. The same officer was also accused of wrongly arresting another individual, assaulting a third and falsifying evidence against a fourth. In response to his actions, the officer was forced to forgo 45 vacation days. However, he remains on patrol, earning close to $120,000 a year.
In fact, all of the cops who faced disciplinary hearings for their actions were allowed to keep their jobs at their regular salaries, only being assigned “dismissal probations” by police commissioners, making them ineligible for promotion. However, that probation period usually lasted for only a year, according to the documents. Bill Bratton and Ray Kelly were named as the NYPD commissioners between 2011 and 2015.
According to BuzzFeed, the documents were kept out of the public record through the use of a state law to protect “personal records.”
New York is one of only three states, along with Delaware and California, that has such a law allowing police misconduct records to remain hidden from the public.
“The department is not interested in terminating officers that don’t need to be terminated. We’re interested in keeping employees and making our employees obey the rules and do the right thing,” Kevin Richardson, deputy commissioner of the department advocate’s office, told BuzzFeed News in a recent statement.
“But where there are failing that we realize this person should be separated from the department, this police commissioner and the prior police commissioner have shown a willingness to do that,” he added.
Richardson also added that since he joined the department in 2014, he has tried to improve the process by reassessing the penalties given to officers guilty of misconduct.
Pentagon wants more money to develop its own hypersonic nukes, just like Russia’s
RT | March 3, 2018
The Pentagon may not be surprised by the new Russian hypersonic missiles – but why not use them as a pitch for more money? A military budget about 10 times that of Russia is not enough, according to the DARPA director.
Asked by a gathering of journalists on Thursday if the United States is spending enough on its own hypersonic missile program, Steven Walker, the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), replied, “I would say no.”
“The dollars that were allocated in this budget were great, but they were really focused on adding more flight tests and getting some of our offensive abilities further down the line into operational prototypes,” he said. “We do need an infusion of dollars in our infrastructure to do hypersonics.”
Separate statements made on the same day by Pentagon spokesman Dana White exuded a bit more confidence – and far less concern – about how well the US arsenal stacks up against Russia’s.
“We’ve been watching Russia for a long time. We’re not surprised,” White said, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation address, which highlighted Russia’s new nuclear arsenal – including hypersonic missiles that have a nearly unlimited range and are capable of outmaneuvering missile defense systems.
“America is moving forward to modernize our nuclear arsenal and make sure our capabilities aren’t being matched,” White insisted.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump, with help from the Republican-controlled Congress, has added more than $200 billion to the projected levels of defense spending for fiscal years 2017 through 2019 – a sum more than twice the size of Russia’s entire defense budget, which totalled an estimated at $69.2 billion in 2016. Washington’s projected military expenditures for fiscal year 2018 is set at $700 billion.
A fair part of that money apparently gets lost to wasteful spending and sloppy accounting. An internal audit leaked to the press in February found that a large Pentagon agency failed to properly keep track of more than $800 million in constructions projects. Plans for a full audit will set the department back another $367 million in 2018.
In 2016, it was reported that the Pentagon had intentionally buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste amid fears Congress would use the explosive findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget.
And while Pentagon officials beg for more money to counter Russian hypersonic technology, there seems to be plenty of cash – $1.4 trillion, to be exact – to pay for Lockheed Martin’s defect-riddled F-35.
Convention provokes rage against NDP machine
By Yves Engler · March 1, 2018
They came, mostly young people, to fight for justice. They came to support the rule of international law, to help solve a longstanding injustice through non-violent means; they came to tell an oppressed people you have not been forgotten; they came to do what is right for a left wing political party; they came to speak truth to power.
And how did the left wing party respond? By using the “machine” — orders from on high, backroom arm-twisting, opaque block voting and procedural manoeuvring — to prevent debate. Silence in class!
While NDP insiders probably feel they dodged the “Palestine Resolution” bullet at their recent convention, many party apparatchiks may come to regret their undemocratic moves. Their naked suppression of debate might stir rage against the machine they’ve proved to be. At a minimum it has provoked many to ask why.
Why, when the Palestine Resolution was endorsed unanimously by the NDP youth convention and by over 25 riding associations, did the powers that be not want it even discussed?
Given the resolution mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it called for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation” one can only assume that the party machine either supports the indefinite Israeli occupation of Palestinian land or has some sort of problem with boycotts and economic sanctions. Clearly the NDP is not against boycotts and economic sanctions in principle since they’ve recently supported these measures against Russia, Venezuela and elsewhere.
If, after a half-century of illegal occupation, one can’t call for boycotting Israeli settlement goods, then when? After a century? Two?
Or is the problem the particular country to be boycotted? Does the NDP hierarchy believe that anti-Semitism can be the only possible motivation for putting economic pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state? Or perhaps it is simply a worry that the dominant media would attack the party?
Whatever the ideological reason the bottom line is the Palestine Resolution was buried to ensure it wouldn’t be discussed. When its proponents sought to push it up the priority list at an early morning session before the main plenary, the party hierarchy blocked it. In a poorly publicized side room meeting they succeeded 200 to 189. NDP House Leader Guy Caron mobilized an unprecedented number of current and former MPs, including Murray Rankin, Randall Garrison, Craig Scott, Tracey Ramsey, Alexandre Boulerice, Hélène Laverdière, Nathan Cullen and others, to vote against debating the most widely endorsed foreign policy resolution at the convention (Niki Ashton was the only MP to support re-prioritizing the Palestine Resolution.)
Apparently, the party leadership discussed how to counter the resolution at two meetings before the convention. In a comment on a Guardian story about the need for the NDP to move left, Tom Allen, a staffer for Windsor Tecumseth NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle, describes “panicked” planning to defeat the resolution. “As for the part about the ‘party establishment (being) easily able to deflect challenges from the left.’ I would respectfully submit that this is wrong. As an NDP staffer I can tell you that it wasn’t easy at all this time and, especially with regards to the ‘Palestinian Resolution,’ which required a great deal of panicked last minute organizing to defeat (and only then by a close margin).”
Why would the party establishment risk turning off so many young activists, exactly the sort of member new leader Jagmeet Singh claims he wants to attract?
A quick look at some of the more prominent supporters of shutting down debate suggests an answer.
Victoria area MPs (defence critic) Randall Garrison and (justice critic) Murray Rankin who voted against debating the Palestine Resolution are members of the Canada Israel Inter-Parliamentary Group and took a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs paid trip to Israel in 2016. After the IDF slaughtered 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza in the summer of 2014, Rankin offered words of encouragement to an emergency fundraiser for Israel.
Party foreign critic Hélène Laverdière, who voted to suppress the Palestine Resolution, took a paid trip to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference in Washington in 2016 and participated in a Jewish National Fund event in Israel.
British Columbia liaison and critic for democratic institutions, Nathan Cullen also voted against debating the Palestine Resolution. “I am strongly in support of Israel”, Cullen bellowed in a 2016 statement about how people should be allowed to criticize that country. In 2014-15 Cullen’s office took in Daniel Gans through CIJA’s Parliamentary Internship Program, which pays pro-Israel university students $10,000 to work for parliamentarians (Gans then worked as parliamentary assistant to NDP MP Finn Donnelly). In 2014 Cullen met representatives of CIJA Pacific Region to talk about Israel, Iran and other subjects. According to CIJA’s summary of the meeting, “Mr. Cullen understood the importance of a close Canada-Israel relationship.”
Maybe the loudest anti-Palestinian at the convention was former president of the Ontario NDP and federal council member Janet Solberg. Unsatisfied as a settler in Toronto, Solberg pursued a more aggressive colonial experience when she moved to historic Palestine as a young adult.
Just before the convention the President of the Windsor-Tecumseh Federal NDP, Noah Tepperman, sent out an email to all riding associations calling on them to oppose Palestine resolutions. In it he claimed, “boycotts based on religion, nationality or place of origin directly contravene the spirit of inclusiveness to which we in the NDP are committed.” He further alluded to an anti-Jewish agenda by connecting the different solidarity resolutions to “a backdrop of already-high-and-rising antisemitism here in Canada as well as abroad.” But, Tepperman sits on the board of the Windsor Jewish National Fund, which is an openly racist organization.
The truth is pro-Israel-no-matter-what-it-does NDP members in positions of power within the party won a narrow battle. How the war goes will depend on the lessons learned by those seeking a party that’s an instrument of real change, that fights against all forms of racism and oppression.
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Iran Delenda Est
By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • July 25, 2019
After Carthage had been significantly weakened by Rome in the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), Cato the Elder, a leading Roman senator, is said to have ended all his speeches with the words: “Carthago delenda est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”). This destruction ultimately took place in the Third Punic War (149–146 BC). A somewhat similar situation exists today in the United States, where war hawks demand that Iran–which in no way could effectively attack the United States, or even conquer America’s Middle East so-called allies—be stripped of its ability to protect itself.
Of course, what makes the American situation different from ancient Rome’s is that Rome sought to eliminate Carthage for its own interests whereas the United States is largely acting to advance the military interests of Israel… continue
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