As has become a standard operating procedure, an array of Western environmental NGOs, advocates of indigenous rights and liberal-left alternative media cover up the US role in attempts to overturn the anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal governments of Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Evo Morales in Bolivia.
This NACLA article is a recent excellent example of many. Bolivia’s TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Secure) dispute arose over the Evo Morales government’s project to complete a road through the park, opposed by some indigenous and environmental groups.
As is NACLA modus operandi, the article says not one word about US and right-wing funding and coordination with the indigenous and environmental groups behind the TIPNIS anti-highway protests. (This does not delegitimize the protests, but it does deliberately mislead people about the issues involved).
In doing so, these kinds of articles cover up US interventionist regime change plans, be that their intention or not.
NACLA is not alone in what is in fact apologetics for US interventionism. Include the Guardian, UpsideDownWorld, Amazon Watch, so-called “Marxist” Jeffery Webber (and here), Jacobin, ROAR, Intercontinentalcry, Avaaz, In These Times, in a short list of examples. We can add to this simply by picking up any articles about the protests in Bolivia’s TIPNIS (or oil drilling in Ecuador’s Yasuni during Rafael Correa’s presidency) and see what they say about US funding of protests, if they even mention it.
This is not simply an oversight, it is a cover-up.
What this Liberal Left Media Covers Up
On the issue of the TIPNIS highway, we find on numerous liberal-left alternative media and environmental websites claiming to defend the indigenous concealing that:
(a) The leading indigenous group of the TIPNIS 2011-2012 protests was being funded by USAID. The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian East (CIDOB) had no qualms about working with USAID — it boasted on its website that it received training programs from USAID. CIDOB president Adolfo Chavez, thanked the “information and training acquired via different programs financed by external collaborators, in this case USAID”.
(b) The 2011 TIPNIS march was coordinated with the US Embassy, specifically Eliseo Abelo. His phone conversations with the march leaders – some even made right before the march set out — were intercepted by the Bolivian counter-espionage agency and made public.
(c) “The TIPNIS marchers were openly supported by right wing Santa Cruz agrobusiness interests and their main political representatives, the Santa Cruz governorship and Santa Cruz Civic Committee.” In June 2011 indigenous deputies and right wing parties in the Santa Cruz departmental council formed an alliance against the MAS (Movement for Socialism, Evo Morales’s party). CIDOB then received a $3.5 million grant by the governorship for development projects in its communities.
Over a year after the TIPNIS protests, one of the protest leaders announced he was joining a right-wing, anti-Evo Morales political party.
(d) The protest leaders of the TIPNIS march supported REDD (Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). The Avaaz petition (below) criticizing Evo Morales for his claimed anti-environmental actions also covered this up. As far back as 2009 “CIDOB leaders were participating there in a USAID-promoted workshop to talk up the imperialist-sponsored REDD project they were pursuing together with USAID-funded NGOs.”
REDD was a Western “environmental” program seeking to privatize forests by converting them into “carbon offsets” that allow Western corporations to continue polluting. That REDD would give Western NGOs and these indigenous groups funds for monitoring forests in their areas.
(e)These liberal-left alternative media and environmental NGOs falsely presented the TIPNIS conflict as one between indigenous/environmentalist groups against the Evo Morales government (e.g. the TIPNIS highway was “a project universally[!] condemned by local indigenous tribes and urban populations alike”). Fred Fuentes pointed out that more than 350 Bolivian organizations, including indigenous organizations and communities, even within TIPNIS, supported the proposed highway.
CONISUR (Consejo de Indígenas del Sur), consisting of a number of indigenous and peasant communities within TIPNIS, backed by Bolivia’s three largest national indigenous campesino organizations, organized a march to support of the road. They argued that the highway is essential to integrating Bolivia’s Amazonia with the rest of the country, as well as providing local communities with access to basic services and markets.
The overwhelming majority of people in the West who know about the TIPNIS protests, or the Yasuni protests in Ecuador, where a similar division between indigenous groups took place, never learned either from the liberal-left media or the corporate media, that indigenous groups marched in support of the highway or in support of oil drilling.
Therefore, this liberal-left media is not actually defending “the indigenous.” They are choosing sides within indigenous ranks, choosing the side that is funded and influenced by the US government.
(f) The TIPNIS conflict is falsely presented as Evo Morales wanting to build a highway through the TIPNIS wilderness (“cutting it in half” as they dramatically claim). There are in fact two roads that exist there now, which will be paved and connected to each other. Nor was it wilderness: 20,000 settlers lived there by 2010.
(g) Anti-highway march leaders actually defended industrial-scale logging within TIPNIS. Two logging companies operated 70,000 hectares within the national park and have signed 20-year contracts with local communities.
(h) They often fail to note that the TIPNIS marchers, when they reached La Paz, sought to instigate violence, demanding Evo Morales removal. Their plot was blocked by mobilization of local indigenous supporters of Evo’s government.
If we do not read Fred Fuentes in Green Left Weekly, we don’t find most of this information. Now, it is true that some of the media articles did mention that there were also TIPNIS protests and marches demanding the highway be built. Some do mention USAID, but phrase it as “Evo Morales claimed that those protesting his highway received USAID funding.”
Avaaz Petition Attacking Evo Morales over TIPNIS
The TIPNIS campaign, which became a tool in the US regime change strategy, was taken up in a petition by Avaaz. It included 61 signing groups. Only two from Bolivia! US signers included Amazon Watch, Biofuelwatch, Democracy Center, Food and Water Watch, Global Exchange, NACLA, Rainforest Action Network. Whether they knew it, whether they wanted to know it, they signed on to a false account of the TIPNIS conflict, placed the blame on the Bolivian government, target of US regime change, and hid the role of the US.
US collaborators in Bolivia and Ecuador are painted as defenders of free expression, defenders of nature, defenders of the indigenous. The US government’s “talking points” against the progressive ALBA bloc countries have worked their way into liberal-left alternative media, which echo the attacks on these governments by organizations there receiving US funds. That does not mean Amazon Watch, Upside Down World or NACLA are themselves funded by the US government – if it somehow exculpates them that they do this work for free. Even worse, much of this propaganda against Evo and Correa appears only in the liberal-left alternative press, what we consider our press.
The USAID budget for Latin America is said to be $750 million, but estimates show that the funding may total twice that. Maria Augusta Calle of Ecuador’s National Assembly, said in 2015 the US Congress allocated $2 billion to destabilize targeted Latin American countries.
This information, how much money it is, what organizations in the different countries receive it, how it is spent, ought to be a central focus of any liberal-left alternative media purporting to stand up for the oppressed peoples of the Americas.
Yet, as Fuentes points out: “Overwhelmingly, solidarity activists uncritically supported the anti-highway march. Many argued that only social movements — not governments — can guarantee the success of [Bolivia’s] process of change…. with most articles written by solidarity activists, they] downplay the role of United States imperialism…. Others went further, denying any connection between the protesters and US imperialism.”
Why do they let themselves become conveyer belts for US regime change propaganda?
Why did this liberal-left media and NGOs let themselves become conveyor belts for US propaganda for regime change, legitimizing this US campaign to smear the Evo Morales government?
Some of it lies in the liberalish refusal to admit that all international issues can only be understood in the context of the role and the actions of the US Empire. As if conflicts related to countries the US deems hostile to its interests can be understood without taking the US role into account. Some liberal-left writers and groups do understand this, just as they do understand they may risk their positions and funding by looking too closely into it.
It seems easier to not see the role the Empire plays and simply present a liberal-left “critique” of the pluses and minuses of some progressive government targeted by the US. That is how these alternative media sources end up actually advocating for indigenous groups and environmental NGOs which are US and corporate funded. They even criticize countries for defending national sovereignty by shutting down these non-governmental organizations, what Bolivian Vice-President Linera exposes as “foreign government financed organizations” operating in their countries.
Some of it lies in the widely held anti-authoritarian feeling in the US that social movements “from below” are inherently good and that the government/the state is inherently bad. The reporting can be informative on social movements in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia where the people struggle against state repression. But when these social movements in Ecuador or Bolivia were able to win elections and gain hold of some real state power, reporting soon becomes hostile and misleading. “Support social movements when they struggle against governmental power; oppose them once they win government power,” they seem to say. Their reporting slides into disinformation, undermining our solidarity with other struggles, and covering up US regime change efforts. Upside Down World is an excellent example of this.
Some of it lies in what many who call themselves “left” still have not come to terms with: their own arrogant white attitude they share with Western colonizers and present day ruling elites: we know better than you what is good for you, we are the best interpreters and defenders of your socialism, your democracy, your human rights. They repeatedly critique real or imagined failures of progressive Third World governments – targets of the US.
Genuine solidarity with the peoples of the Third World means basing yourself in opposition to the Empire’s interference and exposing how it attempts to undermine movements seeking to break free from Western domination.
Some of it lies in deep-rooted white racist paternalism in their romanticizing the indigenous as some “noble savage” living at one with nature in some Garden of Eden. Providing these people with schools, health clinics, modern conveniences as we have, is somehow felt not to be in their best interests.
A serious analysis of a Third World country must begin with the role the West has played. To not point out imperialism’s historic and continuing exploitive role is simply dishonest, it is apologetics, it shows a basic lack of human feeling for the peoples of the Third World.
A function of corporate media is to conceal Western pillaging of Third World countries, to cheerlead efforts to restore neocolonial-neoliberal governments to power. However, for liberal-left media and organizations to do likewise, even if halfway, is nothing other than supporting imperialist interference.
Stansfield Smith, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, is a long time Latin America solidarity activist, and presently puts out the AFGJ Venezuela Weekly. He is also the Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
Documents the State Department was forced to publish show that it spent almost $9 million on political reform in Albania coordinated with billionaire George Soros. The US government denies the expenditure was inappropriate.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) channeled funds into a ‘Justice for All’ campaign to reform the judicial system in Albania in 2016. The campaign was run by Soros’s East West Management Institute, according to the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. The group obtained 32 pages of State Department documents in a legal battle, which concluded with the US government submitting to a Judicial Watch Information Act (FOIA) request in exchange for a dropped lawsuit.
“The Obama administration quietly spent at least $9 million in US taxpayers’ dollars in direct collusion with left-wing billionaire George Soros’s backing of a socialist government in Albania,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
Soros is a billionaire and “shouldn’t be receiving taxpayer support to advance his radical left agenda to undermine freedom here at home and abroad,” Fitton added.
Following the report’s publication, a USAID official told Fox News that the agency did not provide grants to Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) in Albania, which is technically true according to the Judicial Watch publication. Instead, the US embassy in Tirana and the OSF “each provided funding to a local organization to conduct a public opinion poll on attitudes towards the Judicial Reform effort,” a document from February 2017 said. The poll’s result sounded favorable for the judicial reform championed by the OSF and the Obama administration.
“For decades, there has been broad bipartisan agreement in Washington, DC, on the need to promote democracy and human rights abroad,” a spokesperson for OSF told Fox News in a statement, adding: “Of late there has been an unfortunate and misguided effort to politicize this process.”
Fitton and Judicial Watch were especially critical of US Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu, whom the group called in the statement “a holdover from the Obama administration” and an official with inappropriately close ties to Soros. The embassy in Tirana, they point out, frequently asks representatives of the OSF to “participate in technical reviews” of applications for funding USAID receives, according to a February 2017 memo.
Judicial Watch accuses Lu of interfering in Albanian politics by backing the country’s ruling Socialist Party at the expense of the opposition. The group said that in May 2017 Lu declared that the US would recognize the results of the Albanian general election even if the opposition refused to participate.
In March 2017, five Republican senators wrote to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asking about claims that US taxpayer funds were spent on interfering in the internal politics of countries such as Albania, as well as neighboring Macedonia.
“This includes reports of diplomats playing political favorites, USAID funds supporting extreme and sometimes violent political activists, and the US government working to marginalize the moderates and conservatives in leadership roles,” Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) said at the time, adding that “this behavior is unacceptable and must be halted immediately.”
Judicial Watch has also made FOIA requests about the activities of Soros groups in Macedonia, Romania and Colombia.
Judicial reform in Albania remains a matter of controversy. In December last year, opposition parties in the national parliament tried to stop the appointment of an interim prosecutor general – with is part of Albania’s transition to the new system – by igniting smoke bombs in the chamber. The radical move was meant to express protest against what they called an unconstitutional move by the ruling party.
Last month, the political establishment in Washington was up in arms over the Trump administration’s proposal to cut the budget for “democracy promotion” activities abroad, specifically funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its partisan adjuncts, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI).
Bill Browder, the financier convicted of tax fraud in Russia and the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, has taken aim at the Dutch foreign minister, warning him that opposing sanctions against Russia is dangerous.
Foreign Minister Stef Blok should take note of what happened to his Canadian colleague, Stephane Dion, after he opposed the hard line on Russia, Browder tweeted on Tuesday. Blok had voiced opposition to an EU version of the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 US law blacklisting dealings with the Russian government and certain individuals, enacted over “human rights violations.”
Browder’s tweet was pointed out by the Russian embassy in Canada as an instance of foreign meddling.
After Dion expressed opposition to Canada’s adoption of the Magnitsky Act in 2016, Browder made it a “domestic political issue with [the] large Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.” In January 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau replaced Dion with Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian-Canadian with a hardline position on Russia. Canada passed its own version of the anti-Russian law in October that year.
Browder followed up the threat to Blok by singling out two Dutch lawmakers, Pieter Omtzigt and Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma, for advancing the proposal in a 81-69 vote.
Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital, made billions from the 1990s chaos in Russia. He gave up his American citizenship in 1998 to avoid having to pay US taxes, and obtained British citizenship instead. The UK does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, which Browder found useful in 2005, when he was expelled by the Russian government.
Hermitage has been repeatedly investigated for tax fraud. When Sergey Magnitsky, a lawyer hired by Hermitage, was found dead in his Moscow prison cell in 2009, Browder embarked on a global crusade to demonize Russia as a murderous dictatorship.
This resulted in the 2012 passage of the Magnitsky Act, ostensibly enabling the US government to blacklist Russian officials “thought to be responsible” for Magnitsky’s death. In 2016, the law was expanded to have a global scope and blacklist any Russian officials for “corruption” or “human rights violations.” In practice, this has translated into things like stripping Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of his Instagram account.
Both the original act and the 2016 expansion were championed by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), a well-known hardliner on Russia.
Browder is not content to stop there. He has called for using the EU-wide Magnitsky Act to bully the government of Hungary – or “government kleptocrats who are ruining democracy in that country,” as he described it – into submission to Brussels. He is also supporting the Democrats’ campaign to oust Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), accusing him of “selling out his integrity and US national security to the Russian FSB.”
Meanwhile, in Russia, a Moscow court convicted Browder of tax fraud in the amount of $79 million and sentenced him to nine years in a penal colony and a fine of 200,000 rubles ($3,470). The sentence was handed down in December 2017.
Blok became the Dutch foreign minister on March 5. His predecessor Halbe Zijlstra resigned in February, after admitting he lied about a 2006 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zijlstra claimed that he had overheard Putin talk about plans for a “Greater Russia.” It later emerged he was never at the meeting.
On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a passionate speech at Riverside Church in New York staking out his opposition to the war in Vietnam. One year later to the day, he was assassinated. Now, 50 years after that fateful day, the truth about the assassination of Dr. King can finally be told.
On the eve of the meeting of the OPCW’s executive council – convened by Russia and scheduled for tomorrow – we have had a highly revealing succession of statements about the Skripal case from the British authorities.
The one which is attracting the most attention is the admission by Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, that whilst British scientists are able to confirm that the poison used in the attack and Sergey and Yulia Skripal was a ‘military grade’ Novichok type substance (the Russian authorities say the British have told them it is A-234), they cannot confirm that it was produced in Russia.
We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent.
We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to Government who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions you have come to…..
It is our job to provide the scientific evidence of what this particular nerve agent is, we identified that it is from this particular family and that it is a military grade, but it is not our job to say where it was manufactured. (bold italics added)
Gary Aitkenhead did however go on to say that the poison used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal would have required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state actor”.
Gary Aitkenhead refused to say whether or not Porton Down had ever produced any of the poison used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal. However he categorically denied that the poison could have come from Porton Down
There is no way anything like that could have come from us or left the four walls of our facility
Before proceeding further, I should say that I expect that some people are going to seize on Gary Aitkenhead’s denial that the poison could have escaped from Porton Down as an admission that there are stocks of the poison in Porton Down.
That would be a logical fallacy. A denial of one thing – that the poison came from Porton Down – should never be treated as an admission of something else – in this case that Porton Down possesses stocks of the poison.
I say this as someone who thinks it ‘highly likely’ (to borrow a phrase) that Porton Down does possess stocks of the poison.
In any event, we now have clarity on one important point. The scientific evidence does not prove that the poison which was used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal came from Russia.
I expect that this is also the opinion of the French experts the British authorities consulted – if it were not I would expect Gary Aitkenhead to have said so – and of the OPCW’s experts.
The current position in the case can therefore be summed up as follows
(1) the British scientific evidence is that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by a Novichok type chemical agent (probably A-234) but does not extend to this agent having been made in Russia;
(2) the British police have not yet named a suspect in the case;
(3) there are various theories about how Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned. Sputnik has summed some of them. It appears that the latest theory – that the poison was smeared on the door of Sergey Skripal’s house – is running into problems, and may be wrong.
(4) though Gary Aitkenhead says that the British have no knowledge of any antidote in a case of poisoning by the chemical used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal, the British authorities have said that Yulia Skripal is now recovering, which suggests either that her contact with the poison was very slight, or that the potency of the poison has been greatly exaggerated.
Theresa May on 14th March 2018 said that Russia was ‘culpable’ of the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal. Previously, on 12th March 2018 she said that it was ‘highly likely’ that Russia was responsible for the attack. Since the EU Council meeting of 22nd March 2018 the British government together with the EU have reverted to Theresa May’s original 12th March 2018 position that it was ‘highly likely’ that Russia was responsible for the attack.
Gary Aitkenhead’s comments taken by themselves in my opinion make it impossible even to say that Russia was ‘highly likely’ to have carried out the attack.
His claim that only a state possesses the resources to have made the poison is not evidence against Russia given that various other states are known to have the means to produce the poison and may actually have done so.
Besides I understand that this claim is disputed by other scientists, who however – unlike Gary Aitkenhead – have not been involved in identifying the poison.
We are left therefore with our old friends, the British government and the British intelligence agencies who have secretly ‘assessed’ on the basis of ‘other’ evidence which since it is classified they will never show us that Russia made and possesses the poison which was used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal.
That we are dealing not with hard fact of the sort that can be produced in court to prove a case, but with a classified ‘assessment’ the basis of which will always be secret, is confirmed by the British Foreign Office, whose spokesman is reported to have said the following
We have been clear from the very beginning that our world leading experts at Porton Down identified the substance used in Salisbury as a Novichok, a military grade nerve agent.
This is only one part of the intelligence picture.
As the Prime Minister has set out in a number of statements to the Commons since 12 March, this includes our knowledge that within the last decade, Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents – probably for assassination – and as part of this programme has produced and stockpiled small quantities of Novichoks.
Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations; and our assessment that Russia views former intelligence officers as targets.
It is our assessment that Russia was responsible for this brazen and reckless act and, as the international community agrees, there is no other plausible explanation. (bold italics added)
That this is so has also been confirmed by Porton Down
It is not, and has never been, our responsibility to confirm the source of the agent.
This chemical identity of the nerve agent is one of four factors [NB: what were the other three – AM] used by the Government to attribute the use of chemical weapons in Salisbury to Russia.
The Government’s assessment has been clear from the start. Our chemical analysis is a key part of the Government’s assessment, and this has not changed. (bold italics added)
The word ‘assessment’ may sound impressive, but it is essentially no more than a pretentious word for a surmise or at best an analysis. As such – like any other surmise or analysis – it can be wrong.
The famous 6th January 2017 ODNI Assessment – one of the foundation documents of the Russiagate scandal – contains a lengthy discussion of what an ‘assessment’ is. It contains these now famous words
Estimative language consists of two elements: judgments about the likelihood of developments or events occurring and levels of confidence in the sources and analytic reasoning supporting the judgments. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. (bold italics added)
If the British government thinks it knows that Russia carried out the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal – which is all that an ‘assessment’ implies – that is one thing.
However a criminal investigation by the British police into the attack is supposed to be underway.
The British government has preempted that investigation by making public claims of Russian state responsibility on the basis of an ‘assessment’ the grounds for which can never be shown to a defendant, and which therefore cannot be produced in court.
I cannot see how that can do anything else other than undermine the whole investigation process, and prejudice the conduct of any future trial.
Perhaps that is a matter of indifference to most people. It is not to me.
As for the famous formula that it is ‘highly likely’ that Russia is responsible for the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal, I do not see how that is sustainable any longer.
The most that can be said is that the British government thinks that Russia is responsible, about which however it may be wrong.
Perhaps all those countries that expelled Russia’s diplomats on the strength of a British guess should now be inviting them back?
The Porton Down lab at the center of the Skripal poisoning case has a dark history of secret government-run human testing. The human trials were conducted as part of the UK’s war preparation against the Soviet Union.
The military laboratory at Porton Down was the hub of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1939 and 1989. Ministry of Defence scientists conducted chemical experiments on at least 20,000 military personnel and more than 100 secret germ warfare tests on members of the public in preparation for a feared chemical attack from the Soviet Union.
This year, the lab was thrust back into the headlines when it was given the responsibility of determining the substance used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The lab’s chief executive has since confirmed the team are unable to identify the “precise source” of the nerve agent, and the Foreign Office has denied claiming it was from Russia – despite Boris Johnson’s assertions on just that point.
The government-run experiments on military personal seriously breached ethical standards, according to an official report released in 2006. It followed years of complaints from veterans claiming to have suffered lasting damage to their health as a result of the trials.
During the experiments Porton scientists dripped liquid nerve gas on the bare arms of 440 men and at one point tested nerve gas on eight men without the trial participants knowing what it really was. Six men were exposed to mustard gas for five consecutive days – three of whom suffered burns to their scrotums. Around 450 men had their eyes exposed to sarin nerve gas.
A 60-page government report released in 2002 detailed tests which exposed millions of people to harmful substances. The tests consisted of releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and microorganisms over vast areas of Britain – unbeknownst to the population below.
It also revealed that military personnel were instructed to tell any “inquisitive inquirer” that the trials were part of a research project into weather and air pollution.
Designed to test Britain’s vulnerability if deadly clouds were released over the country, in most cases trials used alternatives to biological weapons such as serratia marcescens bacteria or zinc cadmium sulphide, which was dropped on the public in huge amounts to mimic germ warfare.
The government insisted the chemical involved was safe, however cadmium is recognised as a cause of lung cancer and was considered a chemical weapon during World War II. Families living in the tested areas who have children born with birth defects have demanded a public inquiry.
In another trial a military ship sprayed bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii, which mimics anthrax, over a five to 10-mile radius along the south coast of England between 1961 and 1968, exposing more than 1 million people to the micro-organisms. In trials designed to test the vulnerability of government buildings and public transport, bacteria were released on the London Underground, traveling about 10 miles.
The report also confirmed that during World War II Porton Down produced millions of cattle cakes spiked with anthrax which could be dropped into Germany to kill livestock on a mass scale.
Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, estimated in his 2015 book ‘Secret Science,’ that up to 30,000 secret chemical warfare experiments were carried out during that time period at Porton Down. It has also been claimed in most cases the military men were not given enough information to properly give consent.
The 100-year-old lab has a reported annual budget of £500 million and employs 3,000 scientists. In 2008 the Ministry of Defence awarded £3 million in compensation to 360 tested veterans without admitting liability.
The news that the UK’s own chemical weapons scientists can’t confirm that the nerve agent we’re told was used on the Skripals came from Russia is another blow to the credibility of the UK political and media establishment.
They were oh so sure, weren’t they? Or at least they wanted us to think that. For the past four weeks in Britain, we’ve been subjected to a quite hysterical wave of Russophobia, worse than anything we witnessed even at the height of the old Cold War. The poisoning of former MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were found in a collapsed state on a bench in the cathedral city of Salisbury on Sunday, March 4, led not only to calls for a boycott of the football World Cup in Russia, but for RT to be taken off the air. The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and then pressured other European countries to do the same. While on Good Friday, in another provocative move, British authorities boarded an Aeroflot plane at Heathrow Airport.
The important principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ enshrined in Article 11 (1) of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was chucked out of the window. In its place we had ‘guilty until proven innocent.’
Instead of waiting until a full and proper investigation could even begin – let alone be concluded – we had a show trial and sentencing, by media, politicians, and members of neocon think tanks.
Anyone who dared to question the official narrative and didn’t support punishing Russia, faced attack from Imperial Truth Enforcers. Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who said that Foreign and Commonwealth Office sources had told him that Porton Down scientists were unable to confirm Russian culpability, was labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for observing: “The same people who assured you Saddam Hussein had WMDs now assure you Russian ‘Novichok’ nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who condemned the attack but called for a thorough investigation, was savaged not just by the Tories, but also his own Parliamentary party, simply for taking a cautious line in Parliament on March 14.
Thirty-six Labour MPs signed an Early Day Motion – sponsored by arch Corbyn-critic John Woodcock – which declared “This House UNEQUIVOCALLY accepts the Russian state’s culpability for the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal.” The EDM supported the expulsion of Russian diplomats and the calling of a special meeting of the UN Security Council to “discuss Russia’s use of chemical weapons on UK soil.”
Will these MPs now be apologizing to Russia for accusing them of doing something which most definitely has not been proved? Or does supporting a neocon foreign policy mean never having to say you’re sorry?
It’s not just politicians who need to eat some humble pie.
In all my years in journalism, I have never felt so ashamed of my profession as in the last four weeks. The job of the journalist is to ask questions. To find out the truth. To be absolutely fearless in following leads, wherever they may take you. Today in Britain, political journalism means just parroting the official War Party line. It soon became apparent that the government narrative on Salisbury had more holes in it than a slab of Swiss cheese. But we were all expected, like the good little townsfolk in Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Emperor’s New Clothes,’ not to notice. Newspapers and magazines which should have been holding Theresa May and Boris Johnson to account did nothing of the sort. Suppositions were reported, day after day, as proven fact.
The last four weeks have shown how nothing really changed even after the catastrophe of Iraq. The same pro-war commentators are still in place, robotically churning out their rabidly anti-Russian, anti-Putin diatribes for an ever-dwindling readership.
After the lies told about Iraqi WMDs, you might have thought there would be a bit of ‘mainstream’ skepticism about UK government chemical weapons claims against an ‘Official Enemy’ state, which seem designed to lead us into an even more calamitous war. But no, they all carried on as if the only important thing that had happened in 2003 was Arsenal beating Southampton 1-0 in the FA Cup Final.
Just before the Iraq invasion, I remember asking a Conservative MP at a party if he really believed the guff about Saddam having WMDs. He looked at me and paused, before saying, “Well you’ve got to admit, he’s not a frightfully nice chap.” Today that MP, who clearly didn’t believe the government’s assertions, is the British Foreign Secretary.
Boris Johnson has gone further than any minister down the ‘Russia did it’ line. In an interview with Deutsche Welle on March 20, he said: “they (the scientists at Porton Down) were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said there’s no doubt.”
That is flatly contradicted by the statement today of Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, who said, “We have not identified the precise source.”
Just as interesting was Aitkenhead’s response to being asked if Novichok could have emanated from Porton Down itself. “There’s no way that anything like that would ever have come from us… we’ve got the highest standards of control and security,” he said.
Yet in his Deutsche Welle interview, Boris Johnson, in answer to the question: “Does Britain possess samples of it?” (i.e. Novichok), replied, “They (Porton Down) do.” How could Porton Down know the substance used was Novichok if they possessed no samples to test it against?
If samples were stored literally just down the road from where the Skripals were poisoned, surely it’s reasonable to ask whether or not some of them did get out? To maintain, as the UK government does, that no other explanation other than Russian guilt is plausible is clearly nonsense. After going out on a limb on this one, (one suspects in order to curry favor with kingmaker Rupert Murdoch, Boris Johnson’s position as foreign secretary is surely now untenable. Jeremy Corbyn needs to be calling for his resignation – and also that of Prime Minister Theresa May – when he next goes to the House of Commons.
But it’s clear that the UK’s problems go a lot deeper than changing the faces at the top. The Salisbury ‘Rush to Blame Russia,’ before any evidence of Kremlin involvement was produced, proves that we need a clear out of the entire political and media establishment and a move to a more democratic, publicly accountable system. We didn’t get that after Iraq, but we really must get it now.
A chemical weapon expert slammed claims from the UK that a ‘state actor’ must be behind the Salisbury poisoning.
Porton Down – the UK’s secretive defense laboratory – said an assessment of the nerve agent used on former double agent Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia showed it must have been state-backed due to its complexity.
However, the mystery of what happened on March 4 grows deeper as Downing Street’s rush to blame Russia unravels. Sanctions – the toughest in 30 years – were slapped on Moscow in the incident’s aftermath. Now, as the investigation widens, it appears there is now credible doubt, despite Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s insistence of Russian ‘culpability.’
Scientists from Porton Down were unable to confirm that the nerve agent, identified by the UK as A-234 – also known as Novichok – was Russian-made. In an interview with Sky News, Porton Down’s chief executive, Gary Aitkenhead, said the testing team thought a state actor was “probably” behind the poisoning.
Experts from around the world, including James Tour, a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have slammed the claim.
The chemical warfare expert said Russia is not the only state with the information to make the substance, backing up claims by ex-British ambassador Craig Murray, who cited his own sources when claiming that more than a dozen states could know how to make Novichok.
Tour told RT: “It would be natural to pin the blame on Russia in that Russia has indeed made these as part of their weapons stockpiles. We are talking about a development that probably took place more than 30 years ago, and with the fall of the Soviet Union, the word has gotten out to many states as to how to make these things.”
Tour also said ordinary chemists know about the deployment of chemical weapons.
He said: “Many states know about this to the point we are just chemists that talk together know about these types of things and I don’t work for a state system and I learned this just by talking with chemists from overseas – not Russian chemists either. There are chemists around the world that know this type of thing that have nothing to do with Russia.”
Moscow convenes an emergency meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, this week.
A British government spokesperson insisted that the Porton Down assessment was “only part of the intelligence picture, while Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Theresa May, among others, are accused of blaming Russia prematurely.
Afghan officials have admitted that an earlier airstrike on a gathering of Taliban militants in the northern province of Kunduz has also killed civilians, including children.
The Afghan military launched the airstrike against a Taliban religious school (madrasa) in Dasht-i Archi district outside Kunduz City on Monday while top Taliban commanders were gathered inside to plan “bloodshed and atrocities,” according to the Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish.
Security forces said the attack killed a total of 57 to 70 people, but local officials believe the number to be higher.
For much of Monday, the Afghan government asserted that the bombing had killed only Taliban leaders and had caused no civilian fatalities.
However, the office of President Ashraf Ghani acknowledged late Tuesday that civilians had been among the dead, too, and that the bombing would be investigated.
Abdul Matin Atefi, the provincial health director of Kunduz, said 26 bodies had arrived in hospitals and clinics, adding that officials “don’t know how many of those are civilians or Taliban, but the Taliban usually do not allow their dead or wounded to be registered in clinics.”
Naeem Mangal, the director of the regional hospital in Kunduz also said they “have received 57 wounded so far, their ages ranging from 7 to 60.” He explained that the wounds were “mostly from explosives or bombs.”
Radmanish, the Defense Ministry spokesman, meanwhile, claimed that “the wounded brought to the hospitals were hit by bullets and small-arms fire,” suggesting that the Taliban had opened fire on civilians. He said the previous day that no civilians had been in the area of the attack.
According to the United Nations figures released earlier this year, more than 10,000 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the Afghan conflict last year. While the main cause of civilian deaths was said to be militant bombings, the report said US airstrikes as well as government forces inflicted a rising toll.
Venezuelan authorities hit back at their counterparts in Panama and Switzerland this week after they approved new measures targeting Caracas.
Panama’s Economic and Finance Ministry announced this past March 27 that a warning was being issued to the Central American country’s banks advising them to limit and “diligently” supervise financial transactions involving 55 top Venezuelan officials as well as 16 private businesses allegedly associated with the Maduro government.
The list includes President Nicolas Maduro, National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena and rectors Tania D’Amelio and Socorro Hernandez, National Constituent Assembly members Diosdado Cabello and Hermann Escarra, Education Minister Elias Jaua, and Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas.
In an official statement, Panamanian authorities categorized the individuals and businesses as being “high risk in the area of money laundering, financing terrorism, and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” No evidence was, however, presented to support the allegations.
Venezuela possesses no nuclear weapons and is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as various other treaties banning the acquisition and development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Similarly, many of those accused by Panama of allegedly financing terrorism belong to institutions which were themselves the objects of violent opposition attacks during last year’s anti-government protests – including the Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, and regional government offices – which the Maduro administration has repeatedly described as “terrorism”.
Speaking Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who is included on Panama’s list, fired back, describing the accusations as “fake news” and calling on them to provide evidence.
“Show the accounts, my accounts for example, show where my name, my photo appears,” Saab challenged.
Penitentiary Affairs Minister Iris Varela, who also appears on the list, similarly denied the accusations and called on the Central American authorities to publish a “complete list” of all Venezuelan citizens who own assets in the country, placing special emphasis on those mentioned in the Panama Papers.
“Why don’t they do it [publish the complete list],” she questioned. “Simply because they have assets and fortunes that belong to the [Venezuelan] opposition.”
The recent measures follow close on the heels of an announcement last month that Panama will not recognise the results of Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election, mirroring steps taken by the Trump administration and other regional conservative governments in rejecting the May 20 vote.
Meanwhile, Switzerland also moved to apply sanctions against seven high-ranking Venezuelan functionaries last Wednesday, freezing their alleged assets in Swiss banks and applying travel bans.
In response, the Venezuelan government delivered an official letter of protest to the Swiss charge d’affaires Monday, calling the sanctions a violation of the UN Charter’s ban on unilateral coercive measures and charging Switzerland with “subordination” to Washington and Brussels’ hardline Venezuela policy.
“This erratic action… on the part of a historically neutral country like the Swiss Confederation does not create conditions for dialogue and strengthens extremist positions that seek violent solutions,” reads the text of the letter.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court also issued a declaration Monday rejecting the moves as “illegal”. Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno was named in both Swiss and Panamanian measures.
The latest international actions targeting Venezuela have, however, won praise from members the country’s right-wing opposition, including Popular Will party Political Coordinator Carlos Vecchio, who applauded the Panama measures as “the right path at this stage”.
Vecchio is currently in Paris meeting with center-right French President Emmanuel Macron as part of a European tour aimed at drumming up support for more sanctions against Caracas.
During the meeting Tuesday, Vecchio, together with First Justice party leader Julio Borges and ex-Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma – who is currently fleeing the Venezuelan justice system – called on Macron’s government to apply “more sanctions” against Venezuela and to “halt Petro, gold, and capital legitimation operations,” referring to the South American country’s new crypto-currency. They also urged the French president and other European leaders “not to dialogue” with Caracas.
Planteamos al gobierno de Francia apoyar Intervención Humanitaria, juicio de Corte Penal, más sanciones, detener operaciones con Petro, oro y legitimación de capitales para salir de dictadura que oprime a nuestro pueblo . y Desconocer fraude electoral. Con dictadura no se dialoga
Opposition presidential frontrunner Henri Falcon, who defied the main opposition in launching his candidacy and has opposed economic sanctions in the past, has yet to issue a public statement with regard to the latest measures from Panama and Switzerland.
So far, only the US and the UK have approved economic sanctions against Caracas, while Canada and the European Union have rolled out sanctions against top Venezuelan officials
International sanctions against Venezuela have been denounced by the UN Human Rights Council as well as by UN Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas, who labeled the US-led measures “crimes against humanity” and called for the International Court of Justice to investigate.
According to Datanalisis, 55.6 percent of Venezuelans oppose economic sanctions against their country, while just 42 percent support individual sanctions targeting top officials.
Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner from Caracas.
NPR, as FAIR has noted throughout the years (e.g., 8/14/01, 11/01, 2/5/02, 11/15/12, 10/10/14), takes a default pro-Israel line when reporting on the affairs of Israel/Palestine. Its correspondents almost always live in West Jerusalem or in Israel proper, are rarely Palestinian or Arab, and they work consistently to deflect blame for Israeli violence—either shifting blame onto Palestinian victims or dispersing it through false parity.
A segment from Friday (All Things Considered, 3/30/18) on Israel’s killing of Gaza protesters provides a case study in this process. NPR host Ari Shapiro set up the segment, an interview with reporter Daniel Estrin, by blaming the 17 dead and hundreds of injured Palestinians on “the militant group Hamas,” framing Israel as totally defensive. From the very first line, blame is deflected from the Israeli military:
Today saw some of the most violent clashes in years between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops.
We do not have one party’s snipers opening fire on another, unarmed party; we have “violent clashes”—a term, as FAIR (8/12/17) has noted before, that implies symmetry of forces and is often used to launder responsibility. The whitewashing got worse from there:
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza answered the militant group Hamas’ call to protest.
Palestinians have no organic reasons for wanting to protest the occupation of their homes; the whole thing was a top-down decree from “the militant group” Hamas.
They threw rocks and firebombs near the border fence with Israel. On the other side, Israeli troops assembled.
This conveys the impression the Israeli military was just sitting around, minding its own business, when it was aggressively attacked by hundreds of Palestinians, then responded to this assault.
The “firebombs” claim is repeated later in the piece by Estrin himself: “Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires.” This isn’t qualified with “according to the IDF” or “the Israeli government”—even though as of now, there’s no independent evidence firebombs were used, much less used before any sniper fire from Israel.
The issue isn’t trivial: The matter of first blood when it comes to the Palestinian/Israeli “conflict” is a crucial one (FAIR.org, 12/8/17); framing Israel as always responding to threats, rather than inflicting aggressive violence on an occupied people, is a critical difference. And subtle framing devices like “clashes,” distorting timelines of who did what, or morphing IDF claims of “firebombs” into fact are how media keep this myth alive, and further delegitimize Palestinian resistance. (It should be borne in mind that opposition to occupation, even armed opposition, is a right guaranteed by international law.)
When FAIR pointed out to Estrin on Twitter that he had reported the “firebombs” as fact and not a claim by the IDF, he responded, “I reported the firebombs as an Israeli claim.” When FAIR showed evidence he and host Shapiro had done the opposite, Estrin deflected: “Be kind; it’s live radio.”
“Explain why this violence broke out today,” host Shapiro asked. It’s not a massacre or an attack or “firing on protesters,” as it is when official US enemies do it; it’s simply “violence breaking out.”
Estrin again took care to re-establish Hamas as the “driving force” and guilty party:
And it was billed as an independent Palestinian protest campaign. But actually Hamas, which controls Gaza, was a driving force.
This effectively militarized the whole of the protest, treating it not as an outpouring of popular grievances but as an operation quarterbacked by “a militant group.” This is where Estrin asserted the protesters used “firebombs” without attributing the claim to the Israeli attackers. Instead, he cited the IDF as a source on crowd size:
And according to the Israeli army, there were more than 30,000 Palestinians at six different spots along the border. Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires. Israel fired tear gas and live fire. It was the most violence in Gaza since the Gaza War in 2014.
A brief mention of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza was thrown in, but it is blamed on an “ongoing internal Palestinian political fight” that has made the situation “even worse.” Estrin then erroneously told listeners “Hamas took control of Gaza by force a decade ago,” when Hamas actually gained power in Gaza in 2006 through an internationally recognized election. In 2007, Hamas won a civil war with US-backed Fatah, the faction it had defeated in the election, but to say Hamas “took control of Gaza by force” falsely paints it as an usurping force with no legitimate authority.
Asked what will happen next, Estrin shrugged and says more of the same, and that is it.
It’s a brief report, but a highly revealing one: Hamas is at fault, the Palestinians threw “firebombs” first, then the Israeli army “assembled.” The illegitimate Hamas astroturfed the protest, the people are being exploited. Israel just killed those 17 protesters in self-defense.
You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR’s contact form or via Twitter: @EJensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Fugitive Russians in the UK are effectively “hostages” of Western spy agencies, the father of Alexander Litvinenko, an intelligence officer who was poisoned in London a decade ago, told RT, sharing his insight on the Skripal case.
Walter Litvinenko used to support the theory of Russia’s involvement in the 2006 poisoning of his son, Alexander, in London, but he changed his mind after years of analyzing the inconsistencies of the investigation. London said that the fugitive Russian intelligence officer was poisoned with a highly radioactive Polonium-210. Despite an inconclusive investigation, it pinned the blame on Moscow, while the incident was branded as the first ever act of “nuclear terrorism.” Russia has vehemently denied the allegations of its involvement in the incident.
The poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury on March 4, was, in turn, labeled “the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.” While it bears similarities to the poisoning of Litvinenko, it was handled with different tactics, Walter Litvinenko told RT.
Litvinenko senior says the poisoning of his son was designed as a widely-publicized false-flag operation to show the world that Moscow was extremely “cruel,” and the way that it allegedly “deals with its enemies.” The ongoing Skripal scandal, in its turn, was launched to provoke a reaction from Russia, he believes.
“They realized that they have screwed up big time [with the Litvinenko poisoning] and decided to change their tactics a bit. Therefore, they do not show [any evidence] now, but keep it all in secret waiting for Russia to react to it. If there was, as they say, the ‘Russian trace’ there, everything would have been clear long time ago,” Litvinenko said.
He believes that, given the different goal, the ongoing investigation is significantly less transparent than it was back in 2006, since it is easier to hide the truth from the beginning than to try and sweep it under the rug afterward.
“It’s the same with Sasha [Aleksandr], if there was the ‘Russian trace,’ it would emerge over and over again up to this day. But the Scotland Yard was not looking for a criminal. Scotland Yard was covering the tracks,” Litvinenko stated. “Now they do not want to show these tracks altogether, since they know they will have to cover them up the same way as with Sasha.”
The Skripal scandal would eventually backfire on those who initiated it, Litvinenko said. “It will be very difficult to hide it all. And they will eventually fail. They will be caught, and Theresa May will be very ashamed. And this clown, their Foreign Minister [Boris Johnson] – he will be very ashamed too.”
Devil’s bargain
Litvinenko, who lost his son after the former officer of the Russian security service FSB fled Russia for London and cooperated with MI6 and Spanish police, says people like Alexander find themselves in a situation where they effectively become hostages of foreign governments and intelligence agencies. He said it applies to both the rich and powerful who have left Russia after having run-ins with the law, such as the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, as well as less prominent citizens such as Sergei Skripal.
“They are hostages, all of them are hostages of the American authorities, who strive for the world dominance. As long as that’s the case – they will kill the Russians, they’ll kill anybody who’s against it,” Litvinenko said. The wealthy Russians in the UK “are all dependent on the authorities… They are being kept only for their money. And when something happens, they will be blatantly robbed, like it happened to Berezovsky.”
The fugitive oligarch, once one of the wealthiest Russians, was found dead at his home in the UK in 2014. The investigation did not conclusively determine whether he hanged himself with a scarf, or if he was strangled. Prior to his mysterious death, Berezovsky had lost most of his assets and his wealth waned.
Given the previous suspicious deaths of Russian nationals on British soil, Skripal’s fate looks quite grim, Litvinenko believes. The daughter of the former double agent, Yulia, however, might get out of this situation alive, as she was seemingly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Assuming she was of no interest to the intelligence services, the recent reports on Yulia’s conditions improving do not look that “miraculous,” Litvinenko said.
“It’s not beneficial for them if Skripal stays alive. And this girl – she knows nothing. Skripal knows. She simply came to visit her father and got into this,” Litvinenko said. “They’ll let his daughter walk away, probably. But if she knows anything, she won’t get out of it either.”
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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