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AFRICOM’s gambit: Why a US military command is waging a ‘media war’ on Americans

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | May 28, 2020

A regional US military command tasked with hunting down terrorists across Africa seems to be far more interested in waging psychological operations targeting the American public, the Pentagon and the White House. How curious.

Most countries in the world divide their own territory in military areas of responsibility. Not so the US, whose combatant commands span the entire globe – and beyond. One of these, the Africa Command (AFRICOM) is responsible for the entire African continent – with the exception of Egypt, which somehow ended up in the realm of the neighboring Central Command (CENTCOM).

AFRICOM is one of the US combatant commands that span the entire planet, as well as space now ©  Wikipedia

Tasked with going after terrorist groups like Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), AFRICOM has recently focused its efforts on using friendly journalists, media leak and bombastic social media statements to bypass its military and civilian superiors and lobby in Washington for more power, influence and money.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action,” goes a quote attributed to James Bond author Ian Fleming. So it was definitely noticeable when AFRICOM made a third bid to attract attention in under a month.

On Wednesday, the left-progressive magazine Nation published an exclusive story based on an AFRICOM document showing that the command was worried about President Donald Trump freezing US funding for the World Health Organization and how China might exploit that for expanding its influence in Africa. Journalist Ken Klippenstein says the document, dated April 23, was leaked to him.

The leak came only a day after AFRICOM posted a series of tweets accusing Russia of sending fighter jets to Libya. One of them quoted its commander, General Charles Townsend, saying that they “watched as Russia flew fourth generation jet fighters to Libya – every step of the way.”

Except no proof of this was actually offered, and AFRICOM’s statement qualified the claim with weasel-words such as “assessed” and “likely.” Russian officials have dismissed the claim as ridiculous, especially the part about supposedly camouflaging the fighters’ origins by giving them a fresh paint job in Syria.

AFRICOM has been very sore about Moscow’s alleged military presence in Libya – where its own troops withdrew from in March 2019, per Trump’s orders – claiming that Russia is “destabilizing” Libya and making worse the “migration crisis affecting Europe.” In Tuesday’s statement, it accused Russia of not being “interested in what is best for the Libyan people” but “working to achieve their own strategic goals instead.”

That’s a bit rich, considering that it was the US and its NATO allies that carried out the 2011 regime-change intervention, turning Libya from the most prosperous country in Africa into a hellhole infested with warlords, terrorists and slavers ever since.

While leaking to The Nation appealed to the American left, AFRICOM has previously reached out to the right as well. Back in April, the command used a friendly reporter at the conservative Washington Examiner to claim that the (alleged) Russian presence in Libya is “more dangerous than ISIS,” which actually operated in Libya at one point in time.

“We believe that there will be a need in the future, an opportunity for us to get back into Libya again,” the unnamed official was actually quoted as saying at one point, giving away the endgame.

Between bombastic tweets, anonymous insinuations to friendly conservative reporters and leaks to liberal ones, the picture that emerges is of AFRICOM waging a psychological operation (psyop), a propaganda war on the US public bypassing the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon and even the commander in chief himself to lobby for a bigger piece of the military pie.

This may seem far-fetched, but it isn’t strictly speaking without precedent. Some might remember General Phillip ‘Bwana’ Breedlove, who headed the European Command until May 2016. Emails from his personal account – published in July 2016, following his retirement from the US military – revealed months of effort to lobby the Pentagon and the White House to give EUCOM more attention, including spinning tall tales about a “Russian invasion” of Ukraine. The emails also revealed how Washington-based lobbyists identified the right way of approaching certain officials and the best channels for influencing the Obama administration when it came to Ukraine – notably, Vice President Joe Biden.

At one point, Breedlove even accused Moscow of “weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve” – just as AFRICOM is doing now.

All of which raises the question: when did combatant commands – an organization system invented during WWII to streamline command, control and communication between various branches of the military – morph into de facto feudal fiefdoms, with their commanders as barons more focused on currying favor in Washington than doing their actual job in the field?

In AFRICOM’s case, that job literally involves hunting down terrorists – or helping locals do so themselves, since the command is headquartered in Germany and has only a few actual bases in Africa. Not that any of that is going well at all. So AFRICOM shifted its focus on the home front instead.

One possible explanation may be money. Back in February, a rumor began spreading around Washington that the Trump administration was considering “zeroing out” AFRICOM’s budget. Both the rumor itself and the reported reactions to it have been hotly denied, but that might just help shed some light on Townsend’s gambit. As with any bureaucracy, survival is the highest priority.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

May 28, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Five Myths About the Venezuelan Opposition

Venezuelanalysis • May 24, 2020

The corporate media is almost unanimous in its support for US regime change plans in Venezuela. This support naturally extends to the US-backed Venezuelan anti-Chavista opposition, which in the past 20 years has constantly tried to overthrow the government. In order to maintain uncritical support for the opposition, the mainstream media has created a series of “myths” about it. The latest joint VA-Tatuy TV production explores five myths that sustain this favorable coverage.

May 26, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Telephone calls between Biden and Poroshenko reveal Kiev’s submission to Washington

By Lucas Leiroz | May 25, 2020

Recently, several phone calls made four years ago between former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were revealed. The content of the talks is profound and controversial and reveals the high degree of American influence in the coordination of Ukrainian domestic politics, showing the advanced state of submission of Kiev to Washington.

According to the deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament (Supreme Rada), Andrei Derkach, the audio recordings were received from an anonymous investigative journalist. Derkach revealed the content of the recordings and declared full confidence in his informant.

On audio recordings, we can hear the former US Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State John Kerry demanding that the leader of a formally independent state make decisions that are convenient for them, as well as a totally submissive posture on the part of Poroshenko, who is absolutely oblivious to Ukrainian national interests.

The demands made during the talks are diverse and impressive by the American boldness to interfere so deeply in other states. In one of the recordings, dated from 2015, it is possible to hear John Kerry demanding the resignation of Ukrainian attorney general Viktor Shokin, for not meeting American expectations. In another record, Poroshenko communicates with Biden saying he has “good news for him.” In the recording, Poroshenko says that while there was no charge or complaint against Shokin, he managed to convince the attorney to resign. The interlocutor replies: “Excellent”. So, Poroshenko reports that the dismissal of the attorney general is yet another “step in fulfilling his obligations” to the US.

In another phone call, the topic of appointing a new attorney is discussed. After a conversation between Poroshenko and his American counterparts, Yuri Lutsenko is chosen to be appointed to the office. Washington’s interlocutors make it clear that Lutsenko’s appointment is an essential condition for Kiev’s receipt of a loan of one billion dollars. Totally submissive, Poroshenko agrees with the terms of the agreement and the fees imposed without any dispute, consolidating the “partnership”.

In Washington, assistants of the former Vice President and current candidate Joe Biden informed The Washington Post that the recordings have been edited and are being used improperly to put pressure on the parties involved in the talks. However, the veracity of the existence of such telephone conversations has not been contested, which in itself is enough to create an atmosphere of tension and distrust towards the figures involved.

The fact is that the matter is still far from over. Whether or not they were edited, the recordings are apparently real. And, although the content of the conversations is contested, in truth, one billion dollars were withdrawn from the American public coffers and handed over to the president of another country, without the American population being informed of anything. After all, what will be the reaction of the American people when they understand that this money comes from their taxes and, instead of being invested in improvements to the national infrastructure, it is being used in obscure political maneuvers with other countries?

This all tends to strengthen Donald Trump in the upcoming election. The current American president until recently had an absolute majority of voting intentions and is now starting to weaken due to the way he has been dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic in the US – the global epicenter of the infection. Biden, although much less popular, progresses little by little and is already showing the ability to become a real opponent to Trump. However, as the scandals spread, it is likely that there will be a drop in Biden’s supporters or, at least, a greater atmosphere of collective distrust for him.

Still, Joe Biden’s reliability is not the main issue that comes up with the revelations of these recordings, but the level of American interference in the domestic politics of other national states. With these telephone records, Kiev proved to be a zone of foreign interference, where a president is coerced by members of the government of another country to make decisions that he would not like to make. This is not just an extremely demoralizing fact for Ukraine, but it also deeply destroys the myth of “Ukrainian nationalism,” so defended by the militias involved in the Euromaidan coup in 2014. However, more than that, the case may bring Petro Poroshenko to court. The recordings are sufficient evidence to accuse the former president of national treason. If formally accused and condemned, Poroshenko will have ended his political career in the worst possible way for a former president: being remembered as a traitor to his own country.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international Law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

May 25, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

What Google and Facebook Are Hiding

The American Deep State Strikes Back

By Ron Unz • Unz Review • May 24, 2020

After several months of record-breaking traffic our alternative media webzine suffered a sharp blow when it was suddenly purged by Facebook at the end of April. Not only was our rudimentary Facebook page eliminated, but all subsequent attempts by readers to post our articles to the world’s largest social network produced an error message describing the content as “abusive.” Our entire website had been banned.

Facebook publishes a monthly report cataloging its actions to eliminate “improper content,” and although our publication was probably one of the largest and most popular ever so proscribed, the explanation provided was remarkably cursory, with our name mentioned in only two scattered sentences across the 47 page document.

Our investigation linked this network to VDARE, a website known for posting anti-immigration content, and individuals associated with a similar website The Unz Review.

Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their coordination, our investigation linked this network to VDARE, a website known for posting anti-immigration content, and to individuals associated with a similar website The Unz Review.

As I’ve previously discussed, characterizing our alternative media publication as an “anti-immigration” website “similar” to VDare seemed utterly bizarre considering that only about 0.2% of our 2020 content was republished from that source and many months had elapsed since we had last featured a piece on immigration. So I strongly suspected that the claim merely served as an excuse.

I don’t use Facebook or other social networks myself, and noticed little reduction in our daily traffic following that purge, seeming to demonstrate our lack of reliance upon social media. But a week later, this abruptly changed, and our regular daily readership dropped by a significant 15-20%, hardly a crippling blow but quite distressing, setting us back many months of previous growth.

This puzzled me. Why would the Facebook ban have had such limited initial impact but then suddenly become so much more serious? Eventually I discovered that a second, even more powerful Internet giant had also banned us, which explained the sharp drop. Our entire website and all its many millions of pages of serious content had been silently deranked by Google, thus eliminating nearly all our incoming traffic from search results. A few quick checks confirmed this unfortunate situation, best illustrated by a particularly striking example.

Just over a decade ago, I had published an important article entitled The Myth of Hispanic Crime, and for ten years it had always placed extremely high in Google searches, generally being ranked #2 across the 52,000,000 results for “Hispanic crime” and also #2 among the 139,000,000 results for “Latino crime.” The impact of my analysis on the heated public debate had also been quite considerable, and a few years ago a leading academic specialist even asked me to blurb his book on that subject. But my article had now vanished from all such Google searches.

Although Google holds an overwhelming monopoly for web searches across the Western world, comparable products such as Bing and DuckDuckGo using similar technology do exist, and these still list my article among their results, with Bing ranking it at #2 for “Hispanic crime” and “Latino crime,” while DuckDuckGo places it #4 in each. But no one would ever find it using Google.

All the other pages of our website have been similarly blacklisted, effectively eliminated from all web searches courtesy of Google’s information monopoly. This even included the periodical content library that I had built during the 2000s, containing the near-complete archives of hundreds of America’s most influential publications of the last 150 years. Millions of these important articles were available no where else, and their disappearance representing a tremendous loss to academic scholarship.

Google still does contains all these pages, and if the additional specifier “unz” is added to the search, the results do come up, but for anyone not knowing where to look, our entire website and all its content has completely disappeared. This explained our sudden 15-20% reduction in regular traffic.

Internet law is obviously quite murky, but it seems a great shame if Google has decided to use its software monopoly to severely manipulate search results and deliberately hide important information. The notion of Google “disappearing” an entire website and all its material is surely fraught with peril. Should Google’s executives be allowed to “disappear” whichever politicians or candidates they dislike? Should wealthy individuals or powerful groups be able to pay or lobby Google to have their critics removed from all search results?

During 2018 Google employees themselves took a very strong public stance on exactly this issue, protesting their own company’s willingness to produce a “censored” version of their search engine for use in China, a controversy that reached the national headlines, and soon forced executives to abandon the project. But although Google censorship of content within China still remains an inflammatory topic, Google censorship of American content is now apparently so routine and acceptable that it took me more than a week to discover that our entire website had been thrown down the Orwellian “memory hole.”

I’d always taken considerable pride that my Hispanic Crime article had spent a decade ranked #2 among nearly 200,000,000 Google results for that important topic, and was dismayed that Google “disappeared” it. But in fairness, I’d have to admit that those individuals whose views make themselves disagreeable to ruling political elites have sometimes suffered far worse retaliation. For example, my Saturday morning newspapers carried the latest episode in the unfortunate story of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissenting Saudi journalist whose critical writings in the Washington Post so irritated his government that they had him killed and his body dismembered with a bone-saw. Much as I liked my article, having it deranked by Google hardly seems a comparable fate.

For years our website has published a great deal of extremely controversial material, and many readers are probably much more surprised that Google and Facebook took so long to purge us rather than they finally did so.

Consider, for example, my own American Pravda series, which together with related articles runs 280,000 words and has drawn about 3 million pageviews, while attracting over 25,000 comments totaling another 3.5 million words. Many of these articles candidly address some of the most controversial aspects of the JFK Assassination, the 9/11 Attacks, and the history of World War II, topics so touchy that a couple of years ago the redoubtable Israel Shamir described me as the “Kamikazi from California,” and suggested along with numerous other observers that our website might soon be annihilated as a consequence. But aside from a rather lackluster rebuke from the usually ferocious ADL, absolutely nothing untoward happened.

Yet now we have been almost simultaneously banned by both Google and Facebook, America’s leading gatekeepers to the Internet, concerted action that hardly seems likely to have been coincidental, especially coming after years of apparent equanimity. So what had prompted this sudden purge?

I think the obvious answer was my most recent American Pravda installment, which attracted more early readership and social media interest than anything I had previously written, and which appeared just eight days before Facebook’s ban.

My article noted some important facts that are less widely known that they should be, and are quite embarrassing both to our own government and its overly subservient mainstream journalists.

For decades, the American media had regularly denounced the Chinese government for its notorious 1989 slaughter of the student protesters at Tiananmen and shamed its leadership for continuing to flatly deny that historical reality, with China’s demands for censorship of the massacre being a leading source of conflict with Google. However, I pointed out that more than twenty years ago the former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post, who had personally covered the events, published a long article in our most prestigious journalism review admitting that the infamous “Tiananmen Square Massacre” had never actually happened, and was just a concoction of incompetent journalists and dishonest propagandists. Yet for decades the promotion of that debunked hoax by our elite media has continued unabated.

As another example, I noted that back in 1999 our warplanes had bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing or wounding dozens of Chinese diplomats. At the time, our media uniformly reported the attack as a tragic accident, while ridiculing China’s government for alleging otherwise. However, just a few months later, many of the leading newspapers in Britain and the rest of the world revealed that the bombing had indeed been deliberate, quoting numerous NATO intelligence sources to that effect. But since the American media completely boycotted this major international story, very few Americans ever discovered that the Chinese had been telling the truth all along and our own government lying.

Although these historical items were important, they merely set the stage for a far more explosive analysis. The bulk of my 7,400 word article presented the very considerable circumstantial evidence that our current Coronavirus national disaster was entirely self-inflicted, being the unintended blowback from an extremely reckless American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran), presumably organized by the Deep State Neocons or other rogue elements in our national security establishment.

This ongoing disease epidemic has already killed 100,000 Americans and wrecked our economy, so we can easily understand why the guilty parties would do all they could to prevent some of the critical information from getting into general circulation, pressuring Google and Facebook to suppress the crucial evidence. A few excerpts from my long analysis, now banned by America’s Internet giants, are worth once again repeating:

As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.

Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?

* * *

For obvious reasons, the Trump Administration has become very eager to emphasize the early missteps and delays in the Chinese reaction to the viral outbreak in Wuhan, and has presumably encouraged our media outlets to direct their focus in that direction.

As an example of this, the Associated Press Investigative Unit recently published a rather detailed analysis of those early events purportedly based upon confidential Chinese documents. Provocatively entitled “China Didn’t Warn Public of Likely Pandemic for 6 Key Days”, the piece was widely distributed, running in abridged form in the NYT and elsewhere. According to this reconstruction, the Chinese government first became aware of the seriousness of this public health crisis on Jan. 14th, but delayed taking any major action until Jan. 20th, a period of time during which the number of infections greatly multiplied.

Last month, a team of five WSJ reporters produced a very detailed and thorough 4,400 word analysis of the same period, and the NYT has published a helpful timeline of those early events as well. Although there may be some differences of emphasis or minor disagreements, all these American media sources agree that Chinese officials first became aware of the serious viral outbreak in Wuhan in early to mid-January, with the first known death occurring on Jan. 11th, and finally implemented major new public health measures later that same month. No one has apparently disputed these basic facts.

But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious, elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this month, an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in the Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report, while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a few days later, Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed shared such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several government sources.

It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the earliest knowledge of future fires.

Although criticism of the mainstream media has been the central theme of my American Pravda series, I always spend at least a couple of hours every morning carefully reading our leading newspapers, which I regard as unmatched sources of important information so long as their articles are treated with proper caution and rigor. As an example, I would note that most of the crucial evidence suggesting an American biowarfare attack was hidden in plain sight in such eminently respectable news sources as the NYT, the WSJ, and ABC News.

As our global confrontation with China has grown hotter, my morning New York Times has continued to provide invaluable information for anyone who is willing to read it carefully.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo probably ranks as the most prominent Deep State Neocon in the Trump Administration, and is a leading architect of our confrontation with China. Last week he broke quarantine to take a trip to Israel and hold important talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as reported in a 1,600 word NYT article. Although the majority of their discussion concerned American support for the proposed annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, a serious disagreement came with regard to Israel’s growing economic ties with China, with the piece noting that the Jewish State had “antagonized” Washington by allowing Chinese companies to make major infrastructure investments, some of them in sensitive locations. According to the three Times journalists, Netanyahu firmly stood his ground, determined to “push back” against Pompeo’s repeated warnings and refused to reconsider his government’s China policy.

But just a couple of days later, the Times then reported that Du Wei, the Chinese ambassador to Israel, age 57, had been found dead at his home, having suddenly fallen victim to “unspecified health problems.” The piece emphasized that he had become a leading public critic of America’s current policies toward China, and the juxtaposition of these two consecutive NYT articles raised all sorts of obvious questions in my mind.

According to standard mortality tables, an American male age 57 has less than a 1% chance of dying in a particular year, and given the similarity in overall life expectancy, the same must surely be true of Chinese males. Recently appointed Chinese ambassadors are likely to be in reasonably good health rather than suffering the last stages of terminal cancer, and such causes together with obvious, visible injuries account for more than half of all fatalities at around that age. Thus, the likelihood that the 57-year-old Chinese diplomat died naturally within that two day window was probably far less than 1 in 50,000. Lightning does sometimes strike under the most unlikely of circumstances, but not very often; and I think that the unexplained deaths of ambassadors during international confrontations probably fall into the same category.

It therefore seems exceptionally unlikely that the sudden demise of Ambassador Du was not somehow directly connected with the heated dispute between Pompeo and Netanyahu over Israel’s China ties that had occurred two days earlier. The exact details and circumstances are entirely obscure, and we can merely speculate. But since speculation has not yet been outlawed by government edict, an interesting possibility comes to mind.

In sharp constrast to the elected leaders of America’s vassal-states throughout Europe and Asia, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hardly regards himself as beholden to the American government. He is a powerful, arrogant individual who remembers the endless standing ovations that he enjoyed when he addressed our own House and Senate, receiving the sort of bipartisan public adulation that would be unimaginable for a Donald Trump, who remains deeply unpopular with half our Congress. So faced with demands by a Trump envoy that he sacrifice his own nation’s interests by cancelling important Chinese economic projects, he apparently disregarded Pompeo’s warnings and told him to get lost.

The classic 1972 film The Godfather ranks #2 in the IMDb Movie Database, and one of its most famous scenes concerns a conflict between a powerful and arrogant Hollywood film mogul and a visiting representative of the Corleone family. When the polite requests of the latter are casually disregarded, the movie tycoon awakens to discover the bloody head of his prized race-horse in his own bed, thereby demonstrating the serious nature of the warning he had received and indicating that it should not be disregarded. Pompeo had recently served as CIA Director, and I suspect he called in a few favors with elements of the Israeli Mossad and had them take lethal steps to convince Netanyahu that our demands that he reassess his ties with China were of a serious nature, not to be treated lightly. I strongly suspect that the controversial Chinese-Israeli economic ventures will soon be abandoned.

I had never heard of the unfortunate Chinese ambassador prior to his sudden demise, and under normal circumstances any such notions of American foul play might be dismissed as absurd. But consider that just a few months earlier, we had publicly assassinated a top Iranian leader after he was lured to Baghdad for peace negotiations, an act vastly more weighty than the plausible deniability of of a middle-aged diplomat being found dead in his own home of unknown causes.

A few days later, my Wall Street Journal carried an article entitled China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomats Are to Fight, beginning on the front page and running 2,200 words, by far the longest piece appearing in that day’s edition. Yet although the late Ambassador Du had been in the forefront of this ongoing Chinese campaign to challenge American influence, both in Israel and during his previous posting to Ukraine, and the sudden demise of this particular “wolf warrior” was surely known to the journalists, his name appeared nowhere in the text, leading me to wonder whether it had been deliberately excised to avoid raising obvious suspicions in the WSJ readership.

For hundreds of years since the Treaty of Westphalia, the lives of diplomats have been almost always treated as sacrosanct, and a typical response to breaking such international conventions might be tit-for-tat retaliation. China’s leadership tends to be remarkably pragmatic, and recognizes that its national strength is rapidly growing even as our own society decays and declines, so perhaps they will forego any such reaction, at least for the time being. But if any American diplomats or other ranking officials begin to suffer strange fatalities, the explanation may be less than mysterious, though Google and Facebook will certainly do their best to keep it so.

May 24, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Wild Boars Continue to Spread ASF, but How did it Reach the Korean Peninsula?

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 24.05.2020

Earlier, the author believed that South Korea deserved to be commended for its efforts in combating African swine fever (ASF) within its borders, but the situation turned out to be more serious than previously thought.

The following paragraphs provide an incomplete record of the growing number of dead wild boars found not too far from ROK’s border with North Korea. On January 16, there were altogether 74 ASF cases among wild pigs. The aforementioned corpses had been found in South Korea’s Civilian Control Zone, stretching along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). By January 24, the number of infected wild boars rose to 106. And in subsequent months, the growth in the number of cases continued. On March 13, there were 366 infected animals in total, and according to the latest reports, the number of ASF cases was 612 on May 12.

Each of the corpses were buried and the places where they had been found disinfected. The authorities have been trying to solve this issue by building fences in the border zone in order to restrict the movement of wild boars and ensure they do not come in contact with domestic pigs.

In 2019 and this year, South Korea (the fourth largest consumer of pork in Asia) killed and buried more than 153,000 pigs, and also sent hundreds of soldiers and civilians to hunt wild boars near the border in order to prevent the disease from spreading and to keep pig farms safe. The last reported ASF case on a farm was on October 9.

During a meeting with reporters on February 13, Minister of Agriculture Kim Hyeon-soo said that “in order to allow the affected farms to resume operations, infections from wild boars” needed to at least slow down, and that at the given rates of increase, it was not the right time yet. Currently, there is no vaccine or cure against African swine fever and the disease is lethal for almost 100% of the animals. It is unclear from newspaper reports whether pig farms are still closed for business or not. As a rule, quarantine is lifted six months after the last known death, and a pig farm in an affected area is allowed to reopen a year after the restrictions have been eased.

In addition, in some aspects the cure turned out to be worse than the disease, as South Korean officials are facing criticism for allegedly causing damage “to the Imjin River ecosystem by spreading a toxic disinfectant along the North Korean border.” The “disinfectant solution that helicopters indiscriminately sprayed over parts of the Imjin River and the DMZ to stop the virus from traveling south” turned out to contain “quaternary ammonium compounds, also known as Quats”. They are “found in detergents and other household cleaning solutions”, and “some studies have shown that high concentrations” of such chemicals can be fatal to fish populations.

The problem came to light “after a group of local fishermen in Paju” had reported “a drastic drop in the Imjin River’s fish stocks”. According to The Korea Times article, “the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) ― which is in charge of the ASF quarantine ― immediately rebutted the fishermen’s claims that the drop in fishing stock could be related to the anti-ASF solution, saying it only used environmentally-friendly disinfectants” that decomposed easily after use and did not accumulate in living matter.

However, The Hankyoreh, a center-left daily newspaper, painted a different story in its follow-up report. According to the article, the disinfectant solutions sprayed over Paju and Yeongcheon starting at the end of September 2019 did contain Quats.  This continued for a month “without proper oversight”, until finally the ministry became aware of the problem at the end of October, and “demanded local governments to provide more eco-friendly disinfectant solutions” based on citric acid.

The Korea Times contacted MAFRA officials but they “declined to comment on the matter, saying they were not ready to confirm the reports.” South Korea’s Ministry of Environment, on the other hand, stated it would test the Imjin River water for contamination, and it did not try to deny claims that “Quats had been released into the ecosystem”. However, the truth is that the story ended then and there – there were no further reports in the media about the topic. The tests are most likely still being conducted, and the focus of the discussion on the epidemic was skillfully turned to the possibility of a link between North Korea and the outbreak, and the effect of the disease on the DPRK if any.

It is unclear what the situation in North Korea is really like when it comes to ASF. On February 28, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that the DPRK was “strengthening efforts to prevent the African swine fever and other animal-related diseases”. According to the agency, “in an article entitled ‘Preventive measures against veterinary virus infection,’ the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the country” was actively taking measures “to prevent the spread of African swine fever and avian flu”. KCNA also stated that Pyongyang’s veterinary quarantine center was “dispatching officials and experts to the provinces and strengthening the network so as not to miss out on the slightest symptoms and to respond right away”. It added that “observation posts to examine wild animals and birds” were being installed and “tests on domestic animals in farms” were being conducted.

On March 3, 2020, North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper also called “for greater efforts to tackle African swine fever and other animal diseases”.

Still, if there had indeed been an outbreak of ASF in the DPRK, it would have been possible to find out about it indirectly, for example, based on the price of pork or attempts to purchase it from China (where it is the most widely consumed type of meat). Hence, there is reason to believe that the outbreak originated in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 4-km stretch of land that has essentially become a “nature reserve”. This region could also be where the disease spread as prearranging any activities, especially hunting, in the area is a very complex process. But questions that then arise are “How quickly are wild boars reproducing in that territory?” and “How many of them are there?”.

Since the answers remain unclear, some anti-Pyongyang propagandists have alleged that the DPRK has been waging a biological war against South Korea in such a manner. And according to them, even if infected wild boars happen to die on route to the south, this simply means that the authoritarian regime in the DPRK is incapable of coming up with a more rational military strategy.

There is an even more interesting theory. On May 7, a spokesperson for the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER), affiliated with South Korea’s Ministry of Environment, made interim results of a study to investigate origins and spread of African swine flu public. The report, compiled by scientists from the institute, says that the virus genotype found in South Korea was the same as that prevalent in Russia and China. Although the genotype of North Korea’s ASF virus is not known internationally, the researchers speculated that the DPRK “may have played an intermediary role in spreading” it. Pyongyang’s veterinary authorities officially reported to the World Organization for Animal Health that ASF infections had been detected in May of last year.

However, this is not where the story started. The scientists from NIER stated that ASF “started to spread in Georgia” in 2007, and was then “transferred to central Russia” by wild boars. Outbreaks have started and ended every so often since then due to a large population of wild boars. In 2017, there was another outbreak of ASF in the Russian Federation, and then from 2018, the disease spread to Asia, including China, Mongolia and Vietnam.

If one were to view these facts in the same manner as was done earlier to allege involvement of the DPRK, it would be appropriate to mention a biolab in Georgia, which is supposedly developing bioweapons capable of not only targeting people but also economies. In addition, some enemies of the DPRK genuinely wish to see this nation “erased from the map of the world” by any means. After all, “ungentlemanly methods” can be used when it comes to countries viewed as pariahs. And the current expectation is that the Coronavirus, and not AFS, will finally lead to an economic collapse in the DPRK, which will, at first, result in famine and then a “democratic revolution”.

By misusing facts, it would be easy to postulate that certain interested parties are deliberately infecting wild boars so that they could spread the disease in North Korea. And, the negative impact on the ROK was all part of the cunning plan but then something went wrong, and the disease spread out of control. Such a theory can essentially be used as an explanation for any further developments.

From the point of view of the author, none of the above theories have been proven thus far. Nonetheless, he will continue monitoring the measures being taken to fight ASF, and perhaps, with time, there will be more clarity to the situation.

Konstantin Asmolov is a Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

May 24, 2020 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

The Strange Tale of the USS Pueblo

Tales of the American Empire

On January 23,1968 a US Navy ship, the USS Pueblo, was captured by North Korea while conducting environmental research offshore. North Korea killed one sailor during the seizure and held its 82 crewmen for 11 months and kept the ship as a museum. This incident has been cited for decades as proof that North Korea can never be trusted. However, evidence suggests that the secret mission of the USS Pueblo was to get captured!

May 23, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Russian Embassy Denounces US Grant Designed to Find External Enemy for Pandemic Failings

Sputnik -May 22, 2020

WASHINGTON – Russia’s Embassy in the United States denounced a US State Department grant that offers $250,000 for manufacturing health disinformation allegations in order to blame a foreign enemy for Washington’s own shortfalls.

“Such grants reveal the true mood, thoughts and way of thinking of partners from the State Department. Even during the most difficult global epidemic, when we, both Russia and the United States, lose thousands of citizens and should stand together, efforts are aimed at finding an external enemy. He is supposed to be blamed – entirely or partially – for own deficiencies,” the Embassy wrote on Facebook on Friday.

It said there are “influential Russophobic forces in Washington” who never stop their destructive activities, ignoring opposite signals that come from US President Donald Trump.

According to the tender, announced by the State Department’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs, the funds will be granted to an organization with relevant experience “to produce a report on Russian and Soviet health-related disinformation campaigns.”

The Embassy said that it’s already possible to predict that the investigation will target RT TV network and Sputnik news agency.

May 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Court rejects OAN suit over MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s claim about ‘Russian propaganda’

‘Rhetorical hyperbole’ and NOT FACT

© Global Look /ZUMA Press /Michael Brochstein
RT | May 23, 2020

A US judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit by One America News Network against MSNBC over Rachel Maddow’s claims that OAN was “literally” Russian propaganda, ruling that her segment was merely “an opinion” and “exaggeration.”

OAN sued the liberal talk show host and MSNBC for defamation, demanding over $10 million in damages, back in September 2019. The lawsuit was based on the July 22 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow launched a scathing broadside against the conservative television network, labeling it “the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America” and “really literally paid Russian propaganda.”

In the segment, Maddow cited a story by The Daily Beast’s Kevin Poulsen about OAN’s Kristian Rouz, who has previously contributed to Sputnik as a freelance author. Toeing the general US mainstream line on the Russian media, be it Sputnik or RT, Poulsen branded the Russian news agency “the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet” and said Rouz was once on its “payroll.”

Shortly after MSNBC’s star talent peddled the claim, OAN rejected the allegations as “utterly and completely false.” The outlet, which is owned by the Herring Networks, a small California-based family company, said that it “has never been paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government,” with its only funding coming from the Herring family.

In their bid to win the case, Maddow herself, MSNBC, Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal Media did not address the accusation itself – namely, that her claim about OAN was false – but opted to invoke the First Amendment, insisting that the rant should be protected as free speech.

Siding with Maddow, the California district court defined Maddow’s show as a mix of “news and opinions,” concluding that the manner in which the progressive host blurted out the accusations “makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact.”

“The statement constitutes opinion and rhetorical hyperbole protected under the First Amendment.”

The court said that while Maddow “truthfully” related the story by the Daily Beast, the statement about OAN being funded by the Kremlin was her “opinion” and “exaggeration” of the said article.

While the legal trick helped Maddow to get off the hook without ever trying to defend her initial statement, conservative commentators on social media wasted no time in pointing out that dodging a payout to OAN literally meant admitting that Maddow was not, in fact, news.

May 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s ex-leader Poroshenko blames President Zelensky’s office for helping ‘fabricate’ audio of his call with Biden

RT | May 20, 2020

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that leaked audio of his conversations with Joe Biden was “fabricated” by enemies, hinting that the current president’s office might have played a role.

A series of audio recordings of Poroshenko talking to various officials from the Obama administration emerged this week, including a subservient conversation with then-Vice President Joe Biden. The former president dismissed the recordings as part of a “large-scale special operation” launched by a pro-Russian “fifth column” seeking to destroy Kiev’s relations with its allies in Washington.

“Joe Biden is a friend and ally of Ukraine. We should be grateful to Biden for his role as vice president of the Obama administration,” Poroshenko said in a statement published by his party, European Solidarity.

The audio files were published by Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, who also handed them over to the Prosecutor General’s Office. According to Ukrainian media, the prosecutors then launched an investigation against Poroshenko, who is suspected of high treason and abuse of power.

They show the former president literally taking orders from Washington, including from Biden personally, specifically in the case of the firing of top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who investigated the Burisma gas company where Biden’s son Hunter was a board member.

Poroshenko did not deny that the voice in the recordings was his, or that he said any of the things that were on tape, but he repeatedly argued that the recordings were “fabricated.” He argued that the administration of the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, might have handed over “raw materials” to investigative journalists who eventually leaked the recordings to Derkach.

He went on to say all this was done to undermine the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the US and weaken Kiev in its standoff with Russia, blaming “pro-Russia provocateurs” for the leak and predictably accusing Moscow of being the ultimate beneficiary of this “scheme.”

Further pointing fingers, the billionaire candy tycoon named oligarch Igor Kolomoysky – his former ally – as one of the “major sponsors” of the alleged “disinformation campaign.”

Kolomoysky is widely seen in Ukraine as the gray eminence behind Zelensky – a former film and TV comedic actor. He once enjoyed Poroshenko’s support and was appointed governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region, going on to spend a fortune on his private militia and ultranationalist volunteer battalions that fought against the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east.

However, Kolomoysky has since drastically changed his political course, backing Zelensky’s landslide victory over Poroshenko in 2019 and describing an alliance between Kiev and Moscow as the only option for Ukraine.

Poroshenko, meanwhile, vowed to “engage all his contacts, including those in America, both among Republicans and Democrats” to prevent any forces from undermining what he called a “strategic alliance” between Kiev and Washington.

May 21, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

The Case of General Michael Flynn: The Use of Law as a Political Weapon

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | May 20, 2020

The audacious corruption of the FBI and the US Department of Justice (sic) is demonstrated by their frame-up of the three-star general, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump.

US Department of Justice (DOJ) documents that the department was forced to turn over to General Michael Flynn’s attorney reveal that the FBI found no wrongdoing by Flynn in its investigation of him and recommended the investigation be closed. Corrupt FBI official Peter Strzok, a leader of the anti-Trump cabal in the FBI, intervened. Strzok convinced the official managing the investigation not to close the case as it was the wishes of the “7th floor” (top FBI officials) to keep the case open. In the absence of evidence against Flynn, released FBI documents prove that the FBI leadership decided to frame General Flynn. The documents reveal that the FBI’s plan is “to get him (Flynn) to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired. . . . we should try to frame them in a way we want.” General Flynn was forced to incriminate himself with a guilty plea. Otherwise, the corrupt DOJ prosecutors threatened to indict Flynn’s son.

When this proof of egregious government misconduct came to light, the DOJ had no choice but to drop the case against General Flynn. Otherwise it would be clear that law in the US is a weapon in the hands of government. This would mean that control of government would be a life and death matter for the two political parties as it is in Ecuador and Bolivia where incoming presidents arrest or attempt to arrest outgoing presidents.

But we didn’t hear a word about the frame-up of General Flynn from the corrupt presstitutes. On May 7 the editorial board of the New York Times published the largest and most egregious collection of lies in the entire history of the disreputable organization. The editorial— “Don’t Forget, Michael Flynn Pleaded Guillty. Twice.” —claimed the lies coerced from Flynn proved Flynn’s guilt, and that Attorney General William Barr is a “personal fixer for the president” and used the Department of Justice to protect friends and to go after political enemies.

The New York Times has it backwards. Going after political enemies is precisely what the Obama Regime’s concocted case against General Flynn (and Trump) was all about. Remember, it was General Flynn who said on television that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama Regime to send the mercenary jihadists to attack Syria, a decision Obama made in the face of contrary advice by General Flynn, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. When Flynn revealed this, it blew up the fake news story spread by the Obama Regime and the presstitutes that the Obama-supported invasion of Syria by CIA mercenaries was an uprising by Syrian moderates fighting for democracy. Flynn’s blood is blood that the corrupt Obama Regime wanted very badly.

Obama’s role in the frame-up of Flynn and the orchestration of the Russiagate hoax is now coming to light, making the former president nervous. On May 10 the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked if Obama’s nerves are getting in the way of his judgment:

“Barack Obama is a lawyer, so it was stunning to read that he ventured into the Michael Flynn case in a way that misstated the supposed crime and ignored the history of his own Administration in targeting Mr. Flynn. Since the former President chose to offer his legal views when he didn’t need to, we wonder what he’s really worried about.”

The Democrats’ frame-up of General Flynn and their two attempted frame-ups of President Trump show an extraordinary audacity and a corruptly compliant FBI and DOJ. They thought that they could get away with it, and, of course, they had all the help possible from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the presstitute scum for whom lies are the currency of their fake news realm. The presstitutes have made clear that the US media is devoid of integrity.

After high officials such as James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samatha Power, and others repeatedly claimed evidence of Trump and Flynn’s guilt, when under oath their story changed 180 degrees. Here is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

Susan Rice, Obama’s incompetent National Security Adviser, and Samatha Power, Obama’s Russia-baiting ambassador to the UN, along with the rest of the disreputable Obama cabal, have admitted that they saw no specific evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia. The entire thing was an orchestrated hoax that proves beyond all doubt that the Democrat Party and the US media are corrupt beyond redemption.

When the case against Flynn was dropped as a result of the damning evidence of egregious government misconduct in framing a senior official of the US government, the corrupt prosecutors who had prosecuted the innocent Flynn all resigned in a huff, pretending that it was Barr, not them, who used the Department of Justice for self-interested political purpose.

Two Georgetown University law professors, Kean K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer, totally discredited themselves and the Obama contingent in the DOJ, by alleging in the New York Times that the dropped charge against Flynn has resulted in the “utter demoralization” of “the law enforcement community.” In other words, for these law professors and “the law enforcement community” for which they claim to speak, dropping a case consisting entirely of an orchestrated frame-up, a contrived perjury trap, and threats against family members is demoralizing. The professors are so thoroughly dishonest that they use the lies coerced from Flynn—the price of his “cooperation with the investigation” in order that his son would not also be framed-up—as “evidence” of Flynn’s guilt and proof of the political use of the Justice Department by Trump and Barr in dropping the contrived case.

The frame-up of Flynn is not acknowledged by the law professors as political use of the Justice Department.

Instead the law professors describe the vindication of an innocent man on the basis of undeniable evidence as political use of the Justice Department.

If this is the kind of law Georgetown University teaches, the law school should be promptly shut down.

The question that demands an answer is how do people as corrupt and devoid of integrity as Comey, Mueller, and Strzok get into top FBI positions?

May 20, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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