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Destroying the Magnitsky Myth

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | June 21, 2016

Despite all the threats of lawsuits and physical intimidation which hedge fund executive William Browder brought to bear over the past couple of months to ensure that a remarkable investigative film about the so-called Magnitsky case would not be screened anywhere, it was shown privately in a museum of journalism in Washington, D.C., last week.

The failure of the intimidation may give heart to others. There is talk that the film may be shown publicly in Norway, where its production company is located, but where an attempt several weeks ago to enter it into a local festival for documentaries was rejected by the hosts for fear of lawsuits. Moreover, a Norwegian court has in the past week declined to hear the libel charges which Browder’s attorneys were seeking to bring against the film’s director and producers.

Browder was more successful in intimidating the European Parliament where a screening of the film was cancelled in late April while I was in the audience. But I have now seen the banned documentary privately and “The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes” is truly an amazing film that takes the viewer through the thought processes of well-known independent film maker Andrei Nekrasov as he sorts through the evidence.

At the outset of his project, Nekrasov planned to produce a docu-drama that would be one more public confirmation of the narrative that Browder has sold to the U.S. Congress and to the American and European political elites, that a 36-year-old whistleblower “attorney” (actually an accountant) named Sergei Magnitsky was arrested, tortured and murdered by Russian authorities for exposing a $230 million tax fraud scheme.

This shocking tale of alleged Russian official corruption and brutality drove legislation that was a major landmark in the descent of U.S.-Russian relations under President Barack Obama to a level rivaling the worst days of the Cold War.

But what the film shows is how Nekrasov, as he detected loose ends to the official story, begins to unravel Browder’s fabrication which was designed to conceal his own corporate responsibility for the criminal theft of the money. As Browder’s widely accepted story collapses, Magnitsky is revealed not to be a whistleblower but a likely abettor to the fraud who died in prison not from an official assassination but from banal neglect of his medical condition.

The cinematic qualities of the film are evident. Nekrasov is highly experienced as a maker of documentaries enjoying a Europe-wide reputation. What sets this work apart from the “trade” is the honesty and the integrity of the filmmaker as he discovers midway into his project that key assumptions of his script are faulty and begins an independent investigation to get at the truth.

An Inconvenient Truth

It is an inconvenient truth that he stumbles upon, because it takes him out of his familiar milieu of “creative people” who are instinctively critical of the Putin regime and of its widely assumed violation of human rights and civil liberties.

We see how well-known names in the European Parliament, in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and in NGOs that are reputed to be watchdogs have taken on faith the arguments and documentation (largely in Russian and inaccessible to them) which they received from William Browder and then rubber-stamped his story as validated without making any attempt to weigh the evidence.

Their intellectual laziness and complacency is captured fully on film and requires no commentary by the director. One of those especially skewered by her own words is German Bundestag deputy (Greens) Marieluise Beck. It is understandable to me now that I have viewed the film why she was one of the two individuals whose objections to its showing scuttled the screening in the European Parliament in April.

By the end of the documentary, Nekrasov finds that he has become a dissident in his own subculture within Russia and in European liberal circles.

Another exceptional and striking characteristic of the filmmaker is his energetic pursuit of all imaginable leads in his investigative reporting. Some leads end in “no comment” while others result in exposing whole new areas of lies and deception in the Browder narrative.

Nekrasov’s diligence is exemplary even as he takes us into the more arcane aspects of the case such as the money flow from the alleged tax fraud. These bits and pieces are essential to his methodology and justify the length of the movie, which approaches two hours.

Nekrasov largely allows William Browder to self-destruct under the weight of his own lies and the contradictions in his story-telling at various times. Nekrasov’s camera is always running, even if his subjects are not thinking about the consequences of being taped. The film also shows a videotaped deposition of Browder fumbling during an interrogation in a related civil case that is devastating to those politicians and commentators who fully swallowed Browder’s Magnitsky line.

Browder’s supposed lapses of memory, set in the context of involuntary facial expressions of stress and nervousness, would be compelling to jurors if this matter ever got into an open court of law in an adversarial proceeding.

At the end of the twists and turns in this expose, the viewer is ready to see Browder sink through the floor on a direct transfer to hell like Don Giovanni in the closing scene of Mozart’s opera. Nothing so colorful occurs, but it is hard to see how Browder can survive the onslaught of this film if and when it gets wide public viewing.

But the goal of many powerful people, including members of the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament and the Western news media who gullibly accepted Browder’s tale, will be to ensure that the public never gets to see this devastatingly frank deconstruction of a geopolitically useful anti-Russian propaganda theme.

Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2016

June 22, 2016 Posted by | Film Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nick Cohen: Brexiteers are fascists, liars and charlatans whose only recourse is name-calling

nickcohenhypocrisy

OffGuardian | June 19, 2016

Mere days after the Guardian published no less than four different editorials criticising the tone of the debate, the poisoning of the atmosphere, and the contempt we have for our elected officials, Nick Cohen has bravely waded into the debate. Roundly condemning the modern wave of what he calls “paranoid populism”, a term he evidently thinks is catchy:

Paranoid populism’s defining principle can be summarised in a paragraph. No one contradicts me in good faith. My opponents must be lying. They must be corrupt. They are more than merely mistaken, they are degenerate.

“Paranoid populism” – and by this Cohen means anyone who doesn’t like politicians, anyone who doesn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, anyone who wants to leave Europe, “conspiracy theorists” and anyone who voted for Jeremy Corbyn – relies on ad hominem attacks, baseless accusations, assumptions of corruption and the assertion of moral authority. Now, with this in mind, you may think Mr Cohen’s column is then based on objective data and reasoned arguments, and is highly respectful in tone, right? Let’s take a look at the highlights:

The Leave campaign has captured the worst of England and channelled it into a know-nothing movement of loud mouths and closed minds.

You get a measure of the unashamed charlatanry of the men who ask for your votes…

Paranoid populism is a general sickness, as common on the left as the right. You hear it when audiences on Question Time scream that all politicians are liars and crooks, then sit back expecting to be applauded as heartily as they applaud themselves.

…you cannot deny that the Leave campaign has had to head into the sewers of conspiracy theory and race politics because it had nowhere else to go.

Disregarding the honest and “respectful” debate that Guardian has been calling for, Cohen chooses instead to pretend the only issue ever discussed in terms of the EU debate has been immigration – a complete lie. The truth is the only issue the MEDIA has discussed has been immigration – but that has been a deliberate limiting of the debate, in order that well-paid virtue-signallers like Cohen, Toynbee and Freedland can lament the rise of xenophobia in this country, whilst never having to deal with an actual argument.

The anti-EU arguments, and there are many, are about economics and democracy. Can the UK be truly democratic if the unelected bureaucrats from the EC can enforce laws on our government? How will the NHS fare under TTIP? A bill which will destroy the NHS and remove the ability of sovereign governments to outlaw additives, or label GMOs. These questions don’t deserve answers, according to Cohen, and if you ask them…you’re a racist.

Early on in the piece Cohen accuses the Leave campaign of peddling fear:

With a cynicism, which again I can find no historical parallel for, it has now decided to fan fear….

Always one to oppose the political fear-mongering Cohen ends his piece with:

In the name of defending Britain, Brexit will start a rolling economic, constitutional and diplomatic crisis, which its authors do not have the smallest idea how to solve.

No fear-mongering here.

If this article was intended as a complex satire on media hysteria and hypocrisy, I would hail it as a triumph. Unfortunately I know the Guardian, and Nick Cohen, too well for that.

June 19, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Deep State’ behind US State Dept. dissent on Syria

By Derek Monroe | RT | June 19, 2016

Last Friday’s release of US State Dept leaked memo featuring its 51 employees presenting dissent on the US Syria policy has rocked the world of American diplomacy.

As retired US Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, the State Dept spokesman, fielded questions and struggled to contain damage from the revelations, the ripple effect of internal rebellion has spread worldwide.

This event is without precedent as it shows the inner workings of one of the most important departments in the US federal government divided on one of its most important challenges: What to do with Assad’s Syria?

The last time there was internal disagreement in the US State Dept happened in 2003 with several resignations following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. However, that incident failed to grab the attention of the American public and largely pro-government US media.

The current row represents internal disagreement over the Obama administration’s decision not to attack President Assad’s regime after alleged cease fire violations by Syrian military forces. The anger expressed in the memo carries over from Obama’s 2012 so-called red-line declaration, which threatened an attack on Syria’s military if the latter was to cross the threshold of chemical weapons use.

As there were several documented chemical attacks in the Syrian civil war that brought allegations against both sides, any clear indication as to what side carried out the attacks was blurred. Furthermore the idea of weakening the Assad government by military strikes as favored by the State Dept. dissenters has absolutely no relation to military reality on the ground.

The clean cut conflict between the military and paramilitary forces supporting Assad and the rebels has been transformed into a set of simultaneous proxy wars featuring US-supported rebels, Gulf States supported rebels, Syrian military, US military, Russian military, Hezbollah militia, the Kurds, Jihadists and the Islamic State, to mention a few. The outcome of weakening of the Syrian state due to US attacks as desired by the US State Dept dissenters could lead to ripple effect of consequences that guarantees to destabilize the region even further. Additionally, it could trigger a genocide of the Alawi and other minorities that would most definitely follow the fall of the Assad regime.

As all this was to be carried out in the name of ‘human rights in Syria’, the memo presents the new low in cynical exploitation of human tragedy as a ploy to win political “victory” on the ground. Following this narrative, the rule of Islamic State or Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda) is considered a viable and welcome alternative by the signatories as it removes Syria from the orbit of Russia and Iran’s influence, while sacrificing Syrians on the altar of failed US policy that began with invasion of Iraq in 2003.

What is also ironic is that the part of the US federal government responsible for maintenance of external relations based on carrying out policies rooted in international treaties and laws has now, according to the memo’s signatories, been chastised for following them. It is as if the lesson from 2003 of attacking a government that posed no threat to the US was wasted.

An explanation for this phenomenon was provided in Michael J. Glennon’s 2014 book, “National Security and Double Government.”

In it, Glennon argues that the reason US foreign policy and national security policy doesn’t change regardless of comings and goings of US administrations due to what he terms the “deep state.” The author goes back to the political theory of 19th century English scholar Walter Bagehot who argued in his 1867 book, “The English Constitution” that England of the day had a double government: The official one presented to the public, and an inner one, made up of the elites that make real decisions away from constitutional processes, public scrutiny and media.

Glennon picks up on the idea and makes a thesis that national security bureaucrats, along with intelligence and military elite influenced by money and politics, make decisions regardless of constitutional process or even laws.

Until now the idea of a political class presenting different visions for the country in electoral process has been a cornerstone of US political system that calls itself a representative democracy.

The State Dept memo, together with National Security apparatus’ track record of defacto immunity from any effective oversight, has made this vision nothing more than a mirage.

June 19, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Corporate Media Backing Clinton Exploits Orlando Shooting for Passive Holocaust Denial

By Robert Barsocchini | Empire Slayer | June 16, 2016

Within hours of the mass shooting in Orlando, the corporate media backing neoconservative favorite Hillary Clinton began, almost unanimously, to exploit the opportunity to passively promote holocaust and genocide denial.

Outlets including the NY Times, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, and so on, all referred to the Orlando massacre unequivocally as the worst shooting and/or worst act of gun violence in US history. (CBS News, at the time it was accessed for this piece, was running a large “I’m With Her” ad for Hillary Clinton at the top of its page.) A useful comparison to the corporate assessment might be to imagine if a German civilian gassed a group of people to death and the German press reported it as the worst gassing in German history. After the Paris shooting, the Western press likewise reported that as the worst shooting in recent Parisian history, despite that the Parisian police not long ago massacred some 300 peaceful marchers protesting the French dictatorship in Algeria and dumped their bodies in the river that runs through the city (more info in previous piece).

Native News Online quickly pointed out that the corporate media was almost completely whitewashing “mass killings of American Indians in its reporting” on Orlando. It gave two well-known (as far as these go) examples of worse gun-violence and mass-shootings: some 300 Native men, women, and children, were massacred at Wounded Knee, and 70 to 180 were massacred at Sand Creek.

One commenter on the Native News piece shared that she “wrote to every single news outlet yesterday from the New York Times, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Salon to CNN, NBC, and the BBC. I have yet to receive a reply from any of them with the exception of the Oregonian, who changed its language immediately. They also informed me that the Associated Press has just begun to change its language. I’m hoping the Guardian and BBC begin to do the same too.”

Another commenter on the Native News piece gave a short list of some acts of gun-violence, mass-shootings, or mass killings perpetrated in US history, by US forces:

1864 – 300 Yana in California
1863 – 280 Shoshone in Idaho
1861 – 240 Wilakis in California
1860 – 250 Wiyot in California
1859 – 150 Yuki in California
1853 – 450 Tolowa in California
1852 – 150 Wintu in California
1851 – 300 Wintu in California
1850 – 100 Pomo in California
1840 – 140 Comanches in Colorado
1833 – 150 Kiowa in Oklahoma
1813 – 200 Creek in Alabama
1813 – 200 Creek in Alabama
1782 – 100 Lanape in Pennsylvania
1730 – 500 Fox in Illinois
1713 – 1000 Tuscarora in North Carolina
1712 – 1000 Fox in Michigan
1712 – 300 Tuscarora in North Carolina
1704 – 1000 Apalachee killed & 2000 sold into slavery in North Carolina
1676 – 100 Algonquian and Nipmuc in Massachusetts.
1676 – 100 Occaneechi in Virginia
1675 – 340 Narragansett in Rhode Island
1644 – 500 Lanape in New York
1640 – 129 Massapeag in New York
1637 – 700 Pequot in Connecticut
1623 – 200 Powhatan & Pamunkey in Virginia with “poison wine”

Professor David E. Stannard describes one such massacre, wherein US forces weakened a Delaware group of Native men, women, children, and elders through starvation, convinced them it would be in their best interest to disarm, then tied them up and exterminated them and mutilated their dead bodies. Stannard notes that such massacres by US forces “were so numerous and routine that recording them eventually becomes numbing”. (American Holocaust, pp. 125/6)

A couple of corporate news outlets used somewhat more precise language to describe the Orlando massacre, editorializing (while again presenting it as fact) that it was the ‘worst shooting in modern US history’.

However, this still leaves unstated the writer’s opinion of what constitutes ‘modern’. The wounded knee massacre took place in 1898, and the Black Wall Street massacre, for example, in which 55-400 people were murdered and a wealthy black community in Oklahoma ethnically cleansed, took place in 1921. (More examples.)

And, of course, the US has massacred millions of people, many of them with rifles and other types of guns, but also in far worse ways, outside the territory it officially claims, and continues to do so. Obama recently massacred almost a hundred people at one time with what could be viewed as an AR-15 on steroids. Is any of this part of ‘modern US history’? Why or why not? The qualifications are unstated and thus subjective. The vague language from the neoliberal, government-linked corporate outlets may lead readers to believe that all of US history is included in their ‘factual’ statements, and that the US has never massacred more than fifty people anywhere.

In some cases, this impression will have been intentional on the part of the oligarch mouthpiece outlets, which have an interest in fostering a benevolent image of the US to help elites further capture global markets . In others, it will have been a result of conveniently self-aggrandizing ignorance on behalf of the writers and editors – an ignorance that makes an important contribution to their job security.

As some of them partially or belatedly demonstrated, all of the corporate outlets could have easily avoided any holocaust/genocide-denial by calling the shooting the worst by a single civilian on US territory in at least the last thirty years, or any number of other obvious, simple, direct phrasings, which are supposed to be integral to journalism, anyway.

But as John Ralston Saul points out, the neoliberal/neoconservative ideology relies on the ‘whitewashing of memory’. That doesn’t always work, though, especially on survivors of US and Western genocides, which is why, as Ralston Saul further notes, the West and its proxies are behind most of the global murders of writers, who may try to expose facts and evidence that interfere with the West’s historical whitewashing.

Since the Orlando massacre, both Clinton and Trump have called for further escalation of Western aggression in the Middle East.

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter.

June 17, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where do police and protesters stand after the Magnanville stabbings?

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | June 15, 2016

The terrorist attack in Magnanville by alleged Da’esh (Islamic State) operative, Larossi Aballa, on two police officers in Paris, serves one purpose: to remind the public that the war on terror is real and that the police and army are here to protect the population, not oppress it. As protests and strikes continue against the ruling class assault on worker’s security (rights won through a century of indefatigable struggle), phantom enemies are the oligarchic state’s best friends. Phantom enemies allow the oligarchic state to force hostile citizens to seek their protection from the ‘greater evil’.

In the Middle East where they were created by the United States and Israel, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (Da’esh) have attempted to do what former Western trained terrorists could not: to destroy Syria and Iraq through a large-scale military occupation of those countries. The French media portray the Islamic State as being a symptom of the nihilism and despair of our era; that is only partly the truth.

What is overlooked is the deep complicity of the French state in terrorism – the obscenely Machiavellian determination to use the most brutal barbarians seen in the modern era to implement Western imperial policy in the Middle East and throughout the world. The Islamic State is a mercenary force of the Deep State, the imperial financial order, the hidden hand of military and financial corporations and lobbyists who steer the policies of Western governments behind the scenes. They do not oppose ‘Western civilisation’, they serve it, massacring people such as those of Syria who, imbued with patriotism, heroism and piety, refuse to kneel and worship at the alter of Mammon.

We are told by Le Monde that the terrorist/patsy in the police attack, Larossi Aballa, used the Facebook Live application during the attack to propagandise his crimes. He is also reported to have threatened journalists.

Two points here –

1. Anyone with enough curiosity and intelligence to visit a good bookshop knows that the role of journalists in the capitalist world order is to be stenographers to power. A daily perusal of the corporate press proves the proposition unfailingly. It helps restore public confidence in the credibility of corporate journalists if they are ‘threatened’ every now and then; especially by the terrorists whose crimes they ignore when they are committed on behalf of Western geopolitical interests in foreign lands such as Syria.

2. The dissemination of truth through social media and the emergence of citizen journalists all over the world exposing the lies of the corporate press are undermining the public’s confidence in authority. Hence, the use of pseudonyms and the freedom to diffuse information must be curtailed. Fear not! The government will protect you by limiting your ability to research and share information.

The murder of the two police officers comes just days after police were caught on camera vandalising shops in an effort to discredit legitimate and peaceful protests against undemocratic labour reforms. It sends a powerful message: police are there to protect us from terrorists not oppress us on behalf of the ruling class!

Protests are turning violent on the streets of Paris with several cars being set alight by ‘Black Box’ anarchist protesters. These Black Box hooligans sabotage worker’s struggles every time they threaten the established order. Their actions are criminalising legitimate protests. The recent attacks on the Necker Hospital in Paris are acts of sabotage which are providing the pretext for the government to interdict further protests. It is clear the protest movement is hurting the ruling class.

The murder of the two police officers in Paris is an outrage which should be condemned by all. But it must be borne in mind that thousands of working-class policemen and soldiers unwittingly defend an execrable class of people who would not hesitate in murdering if political expediency required it.

As the class struggle intensifies on our streets, the police will be increasingly mobilised against the public. The ‘terrorist threat’ is more important than ever to sustain the illusion of government legitimacy and bludgeon the masses into submission to the police state. But history shows that the weakness of tyranny is that it always relies on servile classes whose loyalty is based more on cynicism and personal advancement than moral conviction. Thus, the possibility always exists for police revolt against the oligarchs. Understanding the precariousness of policing in tyranny is vital in activism. We must not hurl rocks and stones at the police but seek to win them over to the cause of popular democracy and freedom.

June 17, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Foreign Engagement Versus Aggression

By Edward S. Herman • Z Magazine • June 2016

The double standard in the media’s treatment of U.S. plans and actions (“us”) and those of  our allies, on the one hand, and enemy/target plans and actions (“them”), on the other hand, applies at many levels. The United States has been intervening and fighting wars abroad almost continuously since World War II.  This has involved frequent aggressions, using standard definitions of the word, with many of them extremely destructive, and with effects often not consistent with claimed objectives and very costly to U.S. taxpayers. But these cannot be designated “aggression” in our well-honed propaganda system. That word is reserved for dastardly actions such as the Russian takeover of Crimea.

A useful introduction to the lexicon of aggression apologetics can be read from a piece on “Our New Isolationism” by Bill Keller, published in the New York Times on September 9, 2013, and aimed at justifying an enlarged U.S. participation in the war on Syria. Keller, the Executive Editor at the Times for some eight years (2003-2011), was the sponsor of reporter Judith Miller’s notorious war propaganda, and he himself led the Times to support the invasion-occupation-destruction of Iraq from 2003. It is amusing to read Keller in 2013 saying that ”To be sure, nothing has done more to discredit an activist  foreign policy than the blind missionary arrogance of the Bush administration [in Iraq and Afghanistan].”  But if Keller could swallow the fairly obvious lies of Bush war propaganda ten years earlier, and ignore throughout the Iraq war and occupation the gross violations of international law, why should anybody trust his judgment as he tries to rationalize the next war? What does it tell us about the paper that he could survive there as a leader for eight years (and many more as a reporter, Managing Editor and columnist) and still be able to use it for more war propaganda a decade later?

We may note that in 2013 Keller didn’t use the word “aggression” to describe the invasion-occupation of Iraq, nor is Bush described in negative terms beyond “arrogant” even after having destroyed a country and bearing prime responsibility for the killing of possibly a million people. Bush pursued an “activist” foreign policy, and in this article Keller calls for more “activism,” though not with “missionary arrogance,” but only with imperialist-apologetic arrogance. The new target, Assad, is a “merciless dictator,” whereas Bush is not merciless but only arrogant. Keller has other euphemisms for pre-approved military interventions abroad: there is “foreign engagement,” “a more assertive foreign policy,” and “calibrated interventions to shift the balance.” And no question is raised as to the motives behind any new distant military intervention by us.

Keller clears the decks of any possible non-benign or less-than-benevolent aims: he dismisses the idea that the Israelis might be “duping us into fighting their wars,” but he doesn’t mention AIPAC or any neocon influence on policy, and, of course, he never mentions the military-industrial complex and its possible influence on policy. He is just sure that our “vital interests” are at stake in Syria and he hopes that Congress can elicit from the President a recognition of those interests and a “strategy that looks beyond the moment.” Only rival states and those competing with us or our allies have expansionary internal dynamics and dubious aims.

Leaving this comic book-worthy analysis and getting back to the omnipresent double standard, a conspicuous manifestation is in the media’s use of  “purr” and “snarl” words and comparable phrases. The United States and its allies and their leaders are never “merciless dictators” and “butchers” that commit “horrors,” but Assad can be so described (“Syria’s Horrors,” ed., NYT, February 25, 2012; ”Assad the Butcher,” ed., NYT, June 9, 2012; Keller, above). Only leaders of enemy/target states have “tantrums.” (“North Korea’s Latest Tantrum,” ed., NYT, July 14, 2010), resort to “cash and charm” to create divisions among target states (“With Cash and Charm, Putin Sows E.U. Divide,” NYT, April 7, 2016 [the NYT almost never mentions Putin without denigrating adjectives, in a kind of lengthy childish tantrum of its own]); make “brazen nuclear moves (“North Korea’s Brazen Nuclear Moves,” ed, NYT, May 2.  2016); or need to be “reined in.” (“The Best Chance to Rein in Iran,” ed., NYT, July 15, 2015). Surely Israel and the United States don’t have to be reined in; Israel’s steady dispossessions and periodic major assaults are only  retaliating and protecting its national security in the face  of  inexplicable Palestinian terror. The United States was busy “containing” the Soviet Union as the US built its world-wide system of military bases from 1945 to 1990, and it has recently been compelled to contain Russia as the Soviet successor regime threatens all of its neighbors, who cower in fear while the United States seeks to reassure them with denunciations of Russia, arms, bases, training exercises and efforts to get the major EU countries to increase military spending.

Poor NATO has been driven by this resurgent Russian imperialism into defensive responses (Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, “NATO Refocuses On the Kremlin, Its Original Foe,” NYT, June 24, 2015). We only respond as Russia provokes and tests us (Steven Castle, “Russia Tests Distant Water, Resurfacing Cold War Fears,” NYT, May 11, 2015). It is not permissible in the mainstream to suggest that the Kremlin is the one engaging in defensive moves against an expanding NATO; that the U.S.-NATO sponsorship of an anti-Russian coup in Kiev in February 2014, which threatened the major Russian naval base in Crimea, virtually forced a Russian military response. This is avoided in the Times and its confreres by ignoring the coup and its U.S.-NATO link and blacking out the fact that NATO has been steadily expanding and encircling Russia since 1996, perhaps regarding this process as anticipatory self-defense.

The ability to get indignant over the casualty-free Russian takeover of Crimea, by the government that invaded Iraq in a not-casualty-free war of choice only a little more than a decade back, is startling. It is testimony to the power of the double standard and the ability of  politicians at home and in the EU, media and public to block out inconvenient facts. On the same topic it must be considered an Orwellian classic of forgetfulness that Kerry could have stated in 2015 that “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext” (Face the Nation, CBS News, March 2, 2015). This was not only a perfect case of purposeful forgetfulness, it was a double lie, as the Russians had a real national security case for their action, whereas the true “trumped up case” was the one concocted for the Iraq invasion. But no U.S. mainstream publication chortled at Kerry’s Orwellian performance.

An equally interesting case of rewriting history was the claim by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk during an interview on the German TV channel ARD in January 2015,  that “Russian aggression in Ukraine is an attack on world order and order in Europe. All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. [Emphasis added.] That has to be avoided. And nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. And that is exactly what Russia’s President Putin is trying to do.” Interestingly, the interviewer on this program made no comment and asked no questions about this claim of a Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany in World War II. (See Lena Sokoll, “Ukraine Premier’s Pro-Nazi version of World War II: USSR invade Ukraine, Germany,” WSWS.org, January 19, 2015.)  And you may be sure that neither the New York Times nor any other mainstream English language publication reported this nugget. It should be recalled that Yatsenyuk is the “Yats” who U.S. official Victoria Nuland suggested before the February 22, 2014 coup in Kiev would be an appropriate choice to head the new regime, and who did, in fact, soon become Prime Minister.

Just as the “lie that wasn’t shot down” about Korean airliner 007 served the Cold War militarization plans of the Reagan administration, so the media’s handling of the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 flying over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, has served the Obama administration in its anti-Russian campaign. U.S. officials, led by John Kerry, immediately claimed that they  had tracked the killer missile, knew exactly where it came from and that it was the Russian-backed rebels who did it. But the U.S. intelligence report that soon followed indicated that there was uncertainty as to the perpetrators, and there was no evidence that the rebels possessed Buk missiles that could have reached the necessary 33,000  feet. The Kiev government forces did have such missiles and capability.

However, in another telling manifestation of the ability of the powerful to use disinformation to convert a tragedy into a propaganda coup, Kerry’s evidence-free and dubious accusations immediately became a Western truth that was used to smear the Russians and underpin a new sanctions regime against them. A very sluggish investigation into the shootdown was organized by the West, with the NATO-member Dutch in charge, the Russians excluded and the Kiev government a participant with a veto power over the findings. The report which followed, after over a year lag, concluded  that the plane had been shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile, but it came to no firm conclusion on the directly responsible parties. The United States has still not produced its evidence showing rebel-Russian guilt, but the DSB failed to mention, let alone criticize, this U.S. silence, and its focus on the Russian-made Buk as the instrument of destruction made it possible for the Western media to continue the initially established guilt claims against Western targets (Russia and the “Russian-backed rebels”).

The New York Times, as in the previous case of the “lie that was not shot down,” could continue to play dumb, refuse to investigate, and fail to call for the United States to disclose publicly its evidence of  “Russian-supported rebel” guilt. It also added its touch of continuing bias in supposed news reports. For example, the “news” reports repeatedly mention that the missile that struck MH-17 was “Russian made,” but they never feature or even mention that the Kiev government had such missiles whereas the rebels did not—which allows them to tie the killing to Russia, without a hint that it was not Russia that used it in the present case. (“Nicola Clark and Andrew E. Kramer, “Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Most Likely Hit by Russian-Made Missile, Inquiry Says,” NYT, October 13, 2014.

Neither in their news reports nor in their editorial on the case does the Times ever ask the question of who benefits from the shootdown? The Russians and rebels had neither military nor political reasons for the act. On the other hand, the Kiev government and the United States would gain if the shootdown could be blamed on the Russians and rebels, a benefit that was, in fact realized. I don’t claim that this proves who did it. But it does raise questions that are worth thinking about. The Times and Western media in general ignore the issue. In its editorial on the subject, the Times makes the Russians guilty because, while the DSB didn’t find them guilty, their detailed findings are “consistent with theories advanced by the United States and Ukraine,” so we can take Russian guilt as proven! (“Russia’s Fictions on Malaysia Flight 17,” NYT, ed., October 15, 2015) This idiotic non-sequitur is also supported by Russia’s “doing its best to thwart investigations,” a lie in light of thwarted Russian efforts to participate in the investigation. It is notable here that the Times doesn’t raise a question about the U.S. failure to supply the DSB with any data that would support Kerry’s initial claim of possession of crucial evidence. That is really thwarting a meaningful investigation. (Robert Parry, “MH-17: The Dog Still Not Barking,” Consortiumnews, October 15, 2015. “The Dog Not Barking in the Dutch report… is the silence regarding U.S. intelligence information that supposedly had pinned down key details just after the crash but has been kept secret.”)

In short, there are no holds barred in this government-media propaganda barrage. Lie after lie can be brought forward and refuted only in a marginalized media, with dire implications for democratic rule. We may recall James Madison’s 1822 statement that “a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media.

June 17, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Noor Zahi Salman: Everything You’re Hearing About Me Is a Lie

By Sam Husseini | June 15, 2016

Virtually everything in the media about Noor Zahi Salman, Omar Mateen’s wife, is from anonymous government sources. They lie in situations like this.

Such anonymous sourcing helped facilitate the lies used to invade Iraq and countless other horrific policies. They’re doubly dangerous during a panic, consider that after government anthrax killed people in 2001, Andrew Sullivan talked about using nuclear weapons.

And the government has a lot of incentives to lie about this case. They failed to keep people safe. So, what to do? Blame the wife. Blame the Muslims. They didn’t alert us. They are suspect. Potentially, all of them. That’s what Trump — and Clinton in more subtle ways — are saying.

I didn’t need to be in contact with people who know Noor Zahi Salman to know that, but it helps.

In fact, I am in touch with a friend of hers who is in regular contact with people around her now. This means I am probably in closer touch with the actual facts of the case than the zillion media outlets blaring whatever it is “sources” are telling them to blare at you. In so doing, they are smearing a woman who was questioned by the most powerful government in the world, smeared on the largest media outlets as a virtual accessory to mass murder — all without the benefit of a lawyer.

She is apparently telling people around her that virtually everything you’re hearing about her is a lie.

Some examples:

NBC claims: “The Orlando gunman’s wife feared he was going to attack a gay nightclub overnight Saturday and pleaded with him not to do anything violent — but failed to warn police after he left, NBC News has learned.”

Noor Zahi Salman is apparently saying she didn’t have any idea of an attack.

NBC claims: “In addition, she said she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster, several officials familiar with the case said.”

Noor Zahi Salman is apparently saying she didn’t do that. She says it might be possible that they went shopping together — and she went to buy food or clothing and he might have gone to a gun store. In any case, why is this on her? Why are people focusing on her and not the “security” firm G4S that employed Mateen? How is it that the FBI is suddenly off the hook?

The Daily Beast claims: “Noor Zahi Salman also reportedly drove Mateen to the gay nightclub Pulse to case the place before he killed 49 people there on Sunday night.”

Noor Zahi Salman is apparently saying that she never drove him to the club and that in fact, she doesn’t like to drive at all.

ABC claims: “After Noor Mateen began to answer questions, agents administered a polygraph test to determine whether she was telling the truth.”

Noor Zahi Salman is apparently saying she offered to take a polygraph but the government declined.

Noor Zahi Salman is apparently “free”, but with an electronic bracelet.

What we apparently have is severe logrolling between media and government — where government sources hide behind anonymous quotes and media hide behind anonymous sources. So, basically, they can mutually absolve each other and publish most anything that will benefit the both of them.

Seriously, what’s the justification for using anonymous sources on this story? My justification for using my anonymous sources is that they are scared. The only thing the government sources driving this story are afraid of is that they will be held responsible for their words.

We’re not seeing a free-for-all in terms of everyone speculating as they please. There might be justification for that: Bring on the government stenographer, then bring on the false flag theorist. No, what we’re seeing are directed leaks laying out a pattern of smearing an individual, smearing a community and getting the government and media off the hook for the fact that 50 people are dead.

Some friends of Noor Zahi Salman are apparently speculating that what actually happened was that Omar Mateen was about to be outed as gay — and went nuts. This could have broader implications since “Israel surveils and blackmails gay Palestinians to make them informants.” That clearly is speculative. But far more responsible than speculation that is streaming forth from your TV.

I know more, including an allegation about how the government treated Noor Zahi Salman that would turn your stomach.

I’m not telling all I know now because I have reason to believe it might make the family and friends uncomfortable.

See what I did just there? I was forthright with you, my reader, while respectful of my sources.

Big media propagating anonymous government allegations about Noor Zahi Salman distracts from their own failure to protect the public from attacks.

Instead, it fingers the Arab and Muslim communities as responsible. And that’s a message that is being articulated in ways crude and subtle from our “leaders”:

Says Donald Trump: “But the Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn’t turn them in. And you know what? We had death, and destruction.”

More subtly, says Hillary Clinton: “Since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have worked hard to build relationships with Muslim-American communities. Millions of peace-loving Muslims live, work, and raise their families across America. They are the most likely to recognize the insidious effects of radicalization before it’s too late, and the best positioned to help us block it. We should be intensifying contacts in those communities, not scapegoating or isolating them.” Clinton pretends to be against “scapegoating” when that’s exactly what she just did. Most just let it slide because it’s not as crass as Trump’s formulation of much the same idea.

Most subtle still is President Obama: “Since before I was President, I’ve been clear about how extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism. As President, I have repeatedly called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world’s great religions.”

I don’t know Noor Zahi Salman. I have not had the opportunity to speak to her directly. I don’t know for certain how forthright of a person she is, though even through media reports, several people who have known her have said she’s upstanding. My immediate source I believe is very reliable. Things are rushed, there may be misunderstandings here. Noor Zahi Salman is quite likely in shock, she may be honestly misspeaking, especially when in a coercive environment before threatening government agents.

Now, would I like more sources to confirm what I’m writing? Yes, I would, but I think it would be irresponsible to let what are likely falsehoods contaminate the public mind on virtually every major media outlet given the limited capacity to communicate directly with Noor Zahi Salman at this time.

June 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NPR “Correction” Obscures How “Terrorism Correspondent” Falsified How We Might End Threats

By Sam Husseini | June 15, 2016

On Monday, the day after the horrific Orlando massacre, FAIR published a piece of mine: “Commenting on Orlando, NPR Terrorism Reporter Reverses Political Lesson of Madrid Blast,” which stated:

Shortly before noon on Sunday (6/12/16), during NPR’s national coverage of the horrific shooting in Orlando, NPR “counter-terrorism correspondent” Dina Temple-Raston [@NPRDina] made a critical false claim that deserves an on-air correction.

NPR’s hosts were talking about the Orlando shooting, terrorism and the US election. They asked Temple-Raston to chime in on the issue, and she drew a parallel with Spain, claiming that when the 2004 Madrid train attacks happened just before the Spanish election, “the more conservative candidate ended up winning.”

This is exactly backwards.

In fact, the incumbent government, led by the conservative People’s Party, had brought the country into the Iraq War a year before against public opposition, and feared that if the attack were shown to be Mideast-related, voters would be furious. The day of the attack, March 11, 2004, the Spanish government had the United Nations Security Council pass resolution 1530, which condemned in “the strongest terms the bomb attacks in Madrid, Spain, perpetrated by the terrorist group ETA.” Three days later, the day of the election, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Late Tuesday, I got a note from the NPR ombudsperson, Elizabeth Jensen (@ejensenNYC) pointing me to a “correction” on their website, which states: “On June 12, 2016, during a live broadcast about the Orlando shootings, NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston was mistaken when she said commuter trains in Madrid were bombed in 2007. In fact, that happened in 2004. She also was mistaken about the results of elections that were held three days after the bombings. Prime Minister José María Aznar’s party was defeated. Her comments begin around the 42:15 mark in the audio attached to this page.”

I responded with the note below and have not received a response as yet:

If I understand the situation, this is merely being posted online, on the “corrections page” — I don’t see any link to that from the front page. The original falsehood was broadcast live on air on hundreds of stations at what was likely a time of very high listenership, just after the horrific Orlando massacre.

All this is ironically mitigated by the fact that the “correction” does virtually nothing to communicate that Temple-Raston got the story exactly backwards. Temple-Raston claimed that the “more conservative” Spanish party won just after the 2004 Madrid train terror attacks, when in fact, the more antiwar party won — largely because of a 10 percent swing in the polls following the attacks.

Nor does it communicate the critical significance of the underlying point: This was in a discussion about the U.S. election: How would a terror attack affect political campaigns? Virtually no one reading this correction will have any sense of that.

There’s a huge story about what happened in Spain, how Spain has suffered no Mideast related terrorism in over a decade after this dramatic election following the attacks which led to the more antiwar party entering office and ending Spain’s participation in the Iraq war. Do you have plans for that to be shared with your listeners? How it might affect decisions the U.S. makes?

“Counter-terrorism correspondent” Temple-Raston’s getting the year wrong as well is ironically used in the “correction” to further bury the lead of her getting the story backwards.

This can hardly be seen as a response that would compel reporters to ensure they don’t disinform your listeners.

Sincerely,
Sam Husseini

June 16, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

NYT Praises Obama’s Phony War on Terror, Lauds Clinton, Blasts Trump

By Stephen Lendman | June 15, 2016

New York Times editors never let facts interfere with their worldview, consistently misinforming readers, willfully lying.

On Tuesday, they ignored Obama’s imperial madness, his high crimes against peace, his rage for wars, waging them in multiple theaters, using ISIS and other terrorist groups as US foot soldiers.

Instead they praised what demands universal condemnation and accountability, saying in a Tuesday speech, Obama “listed the ways in which his administration has worked to subdue the threat of terrorism abroad and home” – at the same time denouncing what he called Trump’s “dangerous” mindset.

Fact: America created ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups.

Fact: It uses them in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, providing their fighters with arms and other material support, waging wars on sovereign independent states, wanting US-controlled puppet regimes replacing them.

What’s ongoing is longstanding imperial policy, wanting all nations transformed into US vassal states. Instead of denouncing America’s war on humanity, The Times supports it.

As part of its pro-Clinton, anti-Trump campaign, it quoted Obama’s Big Lie about nonexistent US “pluralism and… openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties, the very things that make this country great.”

“The very things that make us exceptional.” The very things neocon infested Washington rejects.

On Thursday, Obama heads for Orlando – not “to bring solace to grieving families and a stricken city” as The Times suggests – solely to exploit last Sunday’s shootings for political advantage, ignoring a likely state-sponsored false flag, his administration responsible for what happened.

He’s been at war with Islam throughout his tenure, Hillary Clinton its lead orchestrator as secretary of state, an unindicted war criminal/racketeer The Times endorses.

Ignoring her rage for escalated war on humanity and increased crackdowns on fundamental homeland freedoms in the wake of Orlando, it praised her for “echo(ing) many of (Obama’s) points and even some of his language” – quoting her saying “(h)istory will remember what we do in this moment.”

“History” documents millions of US imperial victims at home and abroad, its contempt for rule of law principles, its rage for unchallenged dominance, its threat to world peace.

Neocon infested Democrat and Republican parties represent pure evil. World peace hangs in the balance.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

June 15, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Law Enforcement Misrepresentation of Orlando Killer’s 911 Call Ignores U.S. Foreign Policy Motivation

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts | June 14, 2016

In the aftermath of the horrific mass murder at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando over the weekend in which 50 people were killed, media including CNN, USA Today, NPR, NBC News, and CBS News, all reported that the gunman called 911 during his murderous rampage and pledged allegiance to ISIS. None of the journalists writing for any of these news outlets heard the call themselves; they all cite the FBI as their source.

The U.S. government has been engaged in a war against the self-professed Islamic State for the last two years. Their military intervention consists of a bombing campaign against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Hyping the threat members connected to the terror group – or spiritually loyal to it – pose to American citizens is supportive of U.S. foreign policy. If ISIS, or people claiming to act on behalf of ISIS, are a real danger to Americans, it bolsters the notion that the group is a threat to national security and helps justify the government’s military response.

The FBI seems eager to show itself as disrupting ISIS plots in the States. As Adam Johnson has written in FAIR, the FBI has put Americans in contact with informants who claim to represent ISIS and then led the targets to believe they would help the targets join the terrorist organization. The media have then conflated this with an “ISIS Plot” and “ISIS Support,” when no members of ISIS were ever involved in any way.

The FBI’s motivation to portray events in a way that supports U.S. foreign policy, and its history of portraying its actions in a way that has served to hype an ISIS threat should make journalists cautious about taking officials’ words at face value. Especially in the case of a 911 call, which is a public record in Florida, proper journalistic due diligence would be to consult the actual source of the claims being disseminated.

Instead, not a single journalist appears to have done this with Orlando killer Omar Mateen’s 911 call.

On Tuesday, CNN aired interviews of eyewitnesses to the shooting spree who described their harrowing encounters with the gunman inside the club. Patience Carter, who was inside a bathroom stall feet from the gunman when he called 911, said he told the dispatcher that “the reason why he was doing this is because he wants America to stop bombing his country.” (Mateen is a native of the United States, but he was presumably referring to Afghanistan, where both of his parents are from.) She said he then declared that “from now on he pledges his loyalty to ISIS.”

This demonstrates that his primary motive for his terror attack was retaliation for the U.S. aggression in Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 people have been killed since the illegal U.S. invasion in 2001. His mention of ISIS seems merely adjunct to what he admits was his justification for the attack. His motivation precedes his ideological alignment with ISIS, not the other way around.

Anti-war activists have long argued that overseas military operations endanger not only the populations whose countries are invaded, occupied and bombed, but Americans in the United States who are at risk of terrorist retaliation from people outraged by the death and destruction war inevitably produces to the point of being willing to resort to violence themselves.

Carter’s version of the 911 call reveals a very different picture than the partial one revealed by the FBI and reprinted by each of the largest news organizations. The complete conversation depicts Mateen as indicating that he considered his actions a response to U.S. foreign policy. Of course, the murder of innocent civilians is always reprehensible and can never be justified by claiming they are a response to a state’s military aggression, regardless of how deadly and devastating such military operations are. But it should be predictable that some people will use this rationalization regardless and seek out soft targets in the country whose government they claim to be retaliating against.

The FBI chose to omit Mateen’s professed motive entirely when recounting the 911 call to the media, and merely state that he professed allegiance to ISIS. Perhaps they recognized how putting Mateen’s call in context may lead people to question whether U.S. wars in Afghanistan (and Iraq) raise the terrorist threat at home.

After all, this is not the first time this has happened. The surviving Boston Marathon bomber cited the U.S. wars abroad as his motivation for committing the attack that killed three people and maimed dozens more.

It is not clear whether any journalist even asked to hear the 911 call themselves. But it is clear that they chose to disseminate second-hand information when the primary source should have been easily accessible. If it was not made available (as required by law), the public deserves to know that it was suppressed and be given an explanation why.

Media stenographers parroted government officials’ descriptions of the call, which left out the killer’s professed motivation for his politically motivated attack and failed to put the ISIS claim in any context. Unsurprisingly, their misrepresentation served the government’s policy agenda and avoided having the incident serve as an example of a negative consequence of U.S. foreign policy – one that anti-war dissenters have used in arguing against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since the War on Terror was launched more than a decade and a half ago.

June 15, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Meet the Banker Brothers Who Destroyed Ecuador’s Economy

Ecuadorean fugitive bankers Roberto and William Isaias, who are currently in the U.S

Ecuadorean fugitive bankers Roberto and William Isaias, who are currently in the U.S | Photo: El Telegrafo
teleSUR – June 13, 2016

The Isaias brothers are the among the most wanted criminals, convicted for the financial meltdown in Ecuador 16 years ago.

Ecuador is seeking the extradition of banking brothers Roberto and William Isaias from the United States on charges that they embezzled funds and are largely responsible for the country’s financial crisis in 1999—but the United States has spent the last 13 years ignoring the request.

The Isaias brothers have both been found guilty of fraud and the Ecuadorean government says they need to pay back millions of dollars they stole from the savings of average Ecuadorans. So why are they being protected?

History

Brothers Roberto and William Isaias were the owners of one of the biggest banks in Ecuador, Filanbanco, that was part of the economic meltdown that lasted from 1999 until 2001.

This crisis led to the end of the Ecuadorean currency, the Sucre, and its replacement by the U.S. dollar, which eliminated currency autonomy in the Andean country.

The Isaias brothers were charged with embezzlement but fled the country before their trial with over US$100 million in government bailout funds that were given to Filanbanco during the country’s banking crisis.

The brothers were found guilty in absentia for a fraud worth US$600 million, and sentenced to eight years in prison in 2012 by the Ecuadorean National Court, which determined that the brothers had falsified Filanbanco’s financial statements.

Appeals

William and Roberto Isaias have lost two appeals against Ecuador.

In 2014, a U.S. court ruled against the fugitives, and allowed Ecuadorean authorities to seize properties belonging to the brothers in Florida to recover a portion of the US$200 million the government of Ecuador says they owe.

For the seizure of their assets, the brothers sought to sue Ecuador for US$1 billion claiming it was illegitimate and a political prosecution, but a New York court ruled they did not have enough evidence to substantiate their claims.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee also rejected the allegations of the Isaias brothers that their conviction in Ecuador for the crime of bank embezzlement amounted to political persecution.

Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry says it is currently working with the U.S. to reach an agreement that would have a number of fugitives, including the bankers, return to face justice.

Connections

A 2005 leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, made public by Wikileaks, said the brothers “used their ill-gotten wealth to buy safe passage from Ecuador and later pressured prosecutors to reduce criminal charges against them.”

According to The New York Times, the Isaias brothers donated US$90,000 for the re-election campaign of current U.S. President Barack Obama, and have invested at least US$320,000 in other politicians.

The Times explained that the brothers appeared to receive preferential treatment due to their connections to Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. The senator from New Jersey attempted to influence immigration officials in exchange for donations from the fugitive brothers to prevent their deportation, according to the Times. Menendez has himself been under investigation for corruption.

In a related case, Menendez lobbied to lift a ban against Estefania Isaias, daughter of Roberto Isaias, from entering the U.S. She was charged with fraudulent actions to obtain visas for her domestic employees, but after Menendez’s help high-ranking officials in the U.S. State Department lifted the ban.

Linda Jewell, former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, said that “such close and detailed involvement by a congressional office in an individual visa case would be quite unusual, especially for an applicant who is not a constituent of the member of Congress.”

Menendez, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stepped down from his post after being the subject of a corruption investigation. He faces 14 charges ranging from fraud to bribery for having allegedly offered political favors in exchange for expensive gifts and donations to his political campaigns.

Media Control

The convicted Isaias brothers also used their money and political influence in international media against a leading supporter of their extradition: current leftist President Rafael Correa.

Alberto Padilla, CNN’s former news host, said the bankers have been financing an active opposition campaign against the Correa government since they arrived in the U.S.

The brothers have set up interviews with Ecuadorean opposition lawmakers and journalists, financing their trips to the U.S. to visit with several leading news outlets, such as the Miami Herald and CNN, according to El Ciudadano,

The Isaias Group is also one of the investors in CNN Latino and have funded books, magazines, articles and even other media outlets to criticize Correa’s administration.

ANALYSIS:

NGOs: A New Face of Destabilization in Latin America

RELATED:

Money Buys Influence in US for Fugitive Ecuadorean Bankers

US Public Funding Anti-Government Media, Journalists in Ecuador

June 14, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘US govt, MSM give no evidence to confirm ex-Gitmo detainees reengage in terrorist activities’

RT | June 12, 2016

The US government isn’t providing any evidence to confirm reengagement of former Guantanamo detainees in terrorist activities. They give numbers they allege are accurate but provide no facts, said Andy Worthington of the Close Guantanamo group.

The US government’s greatest fears about releasing Guantanamo Bay prisoners are that inmates might re-emerge on the ‘battlefield’ and re-engage in terrorist activities. Seventeen percent of former detainees, or 118, are confirmed to have re-engaged in militant activity, while 13 percent, or 86, are suspected of re-engaging.

Author of “The Guantanamo Files” and co-founder of the group Close Guantanamo, Andy Worthington, told RT America’s Simone Del Rosario that the US government isn’t supplying any evidence to confirm their fears.

RT: You’ve dedicated a chunk of your life to documenting files and stories from Guantanamo not as an attorney, but as an investigative journalist. After all of your research, what do you consider to be the most pressing reason to close Guantanamo for good? 

Andy Worthington: From the very beginning it’s been a bad idea. If you’re going to deprive people of liberty, there are only two ways to do that, if you claim to respect the rule of law. That is that you either charge them with a criminal offence and put them on trial in a Federal court – that would be in the US; or they’re soldiers protected by the Geneva conventions and you can hold them until the end of hostilities.

But after 9/11 the US did neither of those things. So the men held in Guantanamo were held initially without any rights whatsoever. Human beings deprived of all rights, which is a really shocking thing. Although, over the years there have been various efforts to give them legal rights – going up to the Supreme Court, the situation still is that the people held in Guantanamo are effectively prisoners of the political system – we can almost describe them as political prisoners. There is no recognizable justice in their cases. The releases from Guantanamo end up being down to a political process. That is just an unfair way for a country like the US, which claims to be founded on the rule of law and to respect the rule of law, to behave.

RT: As Obama’s term comes to a close are you finding yourself more or less hopeful that he will fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo Bay?

AW: I am certainly more hopeful than I was a few years ago. There was a period in the middle of Obama’s presidency when he’d faced a lot of abstraction from Congress; he was unwilling to spend political capital overcoming that. And for a period of nearly three years only five men were released from Guantanamo.

In 2013, a massive prison-wide hunger strike brought Guantanamo back into sharp focus and put pressure on President Obama to do something about it. Since then he has been releasing many prisoners. We are now in the best position that we’ve been in during his presidency – only one tenth of the men held in Guantanamo is still held there – just 80 men. Thirty of those men have been approved for release by a variety of review processes under President Obama. We have a promise from the administration that they will be released by the end of the summer. Of the rest of the men – so the other 50 – just 10 are facing trials, or have had trials. The other 40 are undergoing this latest review process called the periodic review boards. We don’t know how many of those are going to be approved for release, but at the current rate of the reviews three out of four of the men have been recommended for release – there are currently 24 out of 33 men recommended for release.

Now these are men who were initially described as “too dangerous to release,” but the Task Force that looked at their cases said there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial; or they are men who were initially put forward for prosecution by a Task Force that President Obama set up in his first year in office. But the basis for prosecution has since collapsed. Appeals Court judges ruled that the war crimes for which the majority of the men were being convicted had actually been invented by Congress and were not internationally recognized. That is just a little summing up of the extraordinary ways in which Guantanamo is a shame and embarrassment on every level.

RT: A Washington Post article came out citing the Obama administration and the Pentagon saying that at least 12 released Guantanamo detainees are implicated in attacks on Americans that have resulted in American deaths. Do some of those Congressional members, who are against the closure, have a point in wanting to keep some of these men locked up? 

AW: I think, first of all, they would have to provide us with evidence and they never do. In the early days of the defense department providing information on prisoners who they said have returned to the battlefield, or … have engaged in some kind of anti-American activity. They would provide information about who these men were. For around five years now they have provided nothing. They tell us numbers that they allege accurate, but they don’t provide any further information so that people can do some investigation to judge whether the information is correct or not. They have people that they say are confirmed of engaging in anti-American activities and ones that are suspected. Those figures generally get lumped together by the right-wing lawmakers and by most parts of the mainstream media – very irresponsibly… But, as I said, they don’t provide the information. This latest article in the Washington Post is unfortunately yet another lazy example of propaganda masquerading as journalism, without giving us the facts how are we supposed to accept that there is any truth to this.

June 12, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

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