From Ukraine to North Africa to the Middle East, and most recently in the Caucasus with the outbreak of hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, death and destruction are on the prowl in multiple wars, while at the same time international laws governing armed conflict are rapidly being cast onto the rubbish heap.
Many of these wars have been instigated by powers outside the countries in which they are being fought, and the tide of violence threatening to engulf the world now is unprecedented in history. You would think that at such a time, Hollywood would have better taste than to make a movie glorifying the arms trade.
But of course, you would be wrong.
Scheduled for release in August, “War Dogs” is based on the real life story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two twenty-something Jews who got involved in the arms trade and ended up bidding on Pentagon contracts, in the process scoring deals to supply weapons, ammo, and other military equipment to forces the US was arming in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their story was told in a 2011 Rolling Stonearticle which detailed their passion for money-making, recreational drug use, and their predilection for shady business dealings. “Packouz and Diveroli met at Beth Israel Congregation, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Miami Beach,” the story informs us, and then goes on to describe how they landed some lucrative contracts, including one worth $300 million, all while operating a small company known as AEY, a shell company Diveroli’s father had set up. All of this was in the years 2005-2007.
For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn’t go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY. The result was a new era of lawlessness…
One evening, Diveroli picked Packouz up in his Mercedes, and the two headed to a party at a local rabbi’s house, lured by the promise of free booze and pretty girls. Diveroli was excited about a deal he had just completed, a $15 million contract to sell old Russian-manufactured rifles to the Pentagon to supply the Iraqi army. He regaled Packouz with the tale of how he had won the contract, how much money he was making and how much more there was to be made….
Diveroli, by the way, is the nephew of celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a staunch supporter of Israel and author of several books, including one entitled “Kosher Sex”–a book in which he “breaks down sexual taboos” while pioneering “a revolutionary approach to sex, marriage, and personal relationships, drawing on traditional Jewish wisdom.” Boteach has also run inflammatory ads in the New York Times defending Israel, and in 2012 was bankrolled by Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in an unsuccessful campaign for Congress.
So in other words, while Boteach was doing the TV talk show circuit advising Americans how to improve their sex lives, his nephew Diveroli was finding his niche in the “murkey underworld” of arms trafficking.
Above all, Diveroli cared about the bottom line. “Efraim was a Republican because they started more wars,” Packouz says. “When the United States invaded Iraq, he was thrilled. He said to me, ‘Do I think George Bush did the right thing for the country by invading Iraq? No. But am I happy about it? Absofuckinglutely.’ He hoped we would invade more countries because it was good for business.”
The big $300 million deal they landed found them purchasing stocks of Chinese-made ammunition in the Balkans and transporting them to Afghanistan, but a US embargo against Chinese weapons meant the whole thing had to be carried out clandestinely. The ammo was repackaged in cardboard boxes with no Chinese lettering. But some of the ammo was quite old, a number of the crates were infested with termites, and the two ended up being indicted for fraud and pleading guilty. And now we have a forthcoming Hollywood movie about their endogamic escapades.
It’s tempting to dismiss “War Dogs” as just another piece of Hollywood trash, but of course it comes as millions are coping with the destruction of homes and lives in the bogus war on terror and as whole nations are being torn apart. In Syria, the US has aligned itself with so-called “moderate” rebels, equipping them with vast stocks of weapons, many of which have ended up in the hands of ISIS, while in Yemen, we have assisted Saudi Arabia in an air campaign which, as of January 2016, had resulted in 2,795 killed and 5,324 wounded. At least 62 civilians were killed by coalition airstrikes in December alone, reports the UN, which was more than twice the number killed in the previous month. Many others have been left homeless.
A girl drinks from a leaking street pipe in Yemen, where millions now have no access to drinking water
But this hasn’t stopped the US from continuing to fuel the fire, so to speak. According to Defense News, the State Department has facilitated $33 billion worth of weapons sales to its Arab Gulf allies since May of 2015. The weapons–including anti-armor missiles, attack helicopters, and ballistic missile defense capabilities–have been sold to the six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC. These would of course be some of the same countries that have been supplying arms to ISIS while also carrying out war crimes in Yemen.
“In addition, the U.S. government and industry also delivered 4,500 precision-guided munitions to the GCC countries in 2015, including 1,500 taken directly from U.S. military stocks — a significant action given our military’s own needs,” said David McKeeby, a spokesman with the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
How much of this ordnance may have ended up in the hands of not-so-moderate terrorists is unclear, but in December of 2015, Amnesty International published a report entitled “Taking Stock: The Arming of the Islamic State,” which found that the terrorist army “now deploys a substantial arsenal of arms and ammunition, designed or manufactured in more than 25 countries.”
A lot of this was looted or captured from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks, says the report, but illicit weapons transactions also seem to have played a considerable role in building up the ISIS arsenal–and some of the “chain of custody” evidence cited in the report, including a cache of weapons transferred from Croatia to the Free Syrian Army, sounds almost eerily similar to the sort of shady weapons trafficking operation run by Packouz and Diveroli.
Of course there is the old adage about art imitating life, and, on some level the fact that Hollywood would make a film about two Jews and then go on to entitle it “War Dogs” is perhaps not surprising. This, keep in mind, coming at a time when evidence of Israel’s support for terrorists in Syria is as clear as the hand in front of your face. And of course who could forget the lovable Victoria Nuland and her famous “f**k-the-EU” comment, mouthed off at a time when her State Department was busy engineering a coup in Ukraine?
In fact, efforts by Zionist Jews to create instability and instigate wars are getting to be about as common as fireflies on a summer night. They’re not always easy to spot, but you know they’re out there because they occasionally involuntarily light up, as when someone like Nuland gets caught in a taped phone conversation.
And now it looks like certain fireflies have moved into the Caucasus where they seem to be taking advantage of a long-simmering dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On April 2, intense fighting broke out followed by a series of charges, counter-charges, claims and counterclaims, made by both sides. According to the Armenians, it started with an offensive launched by Azerbaijani troops using tanks and artillery. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, insists it was responding to large-caliber weapons fire from inside the ethnic Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh area. So who is telling the truth? Or are both sides lying?
Hard to say for sure, but a couple of knowns are worth mentioning: A) Armenia is closely allied with Russia, and, B) Azerbaijan, too, has ties, including trade ties, with Russia, but it also is closely aligned with Turkey and maintains extensive trade relations with Israel. And the trade with Israel has been especially heavy in the area of military procurement.
Israeli drones, anti-aircraft and missile defense systems have been supplied to Azerbaijan in the wake of a $1.6 billion agreement struck between the two countries in 2012. Israeli companies are also active in the Azerbaijani telecommunications, agriculture, water supply medical technology, and energy sectors. That makes for a lot of sayanim on the ground inside a relatively small country.
Perhaps no surprise, then, that Armenian forces shot down an Israeli drone on April 2–the very day hostilities broke out.
The ThunderB drone is known for its light weight, 62 pounds, and its long flying time–25.5 hours–on a single tank of fuel. It is made by an Israeli company known as BlueBird, which reportedly may be about to be purchased by Elbit Systems.
And then on Tuesday came news of yet another Israeli drone spotted over Nagorno-Karabakh–this one believed to be a Harop drone, made by Israeli Aerospace Industries. The Harop is also known as a “suicide drone” in that rather than firing a missile at a target it simply becomes the missile itself, ramming the target and destroying it.
According to Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today, the key to understanding the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is to recognize “that Azerbaijan is a client state of Israel and the CIA.” He adds that Azerbaijan has as well become “the regional operating center for Google Idea Groups,” which he refers to as the “shadow CIA.”
Google Ideas was formed in 2010. At that time Google CEO Eric Schmidt tapped the State Department’s Jared Cohen to direct the new venture, dubbed as a “think/do tank.” In late 2015, Google was reorganized under a parent company called Alphabet, Inc., and in February of this year Google Ideas was rebranded as “Jigsaw”–although it is still run by Cohen and still affiliated with Google.
Cohen, by the way, is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and during his years with the State Department (2006-2010) he worked closely with Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, and became a strategic advisor in US policy toward Iran. Jigsaw’s mission is to “use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks,” says Schmidt.
Sounds nice, but a purview of Jigsaw’s website–fittingly kind of creepy and dark-looking–suggests that virtually all of the “activists” it has provided support to seem to be from countries with governments the US seeks to overthrow. And indeed, in 2012 Wikileaks released a cache of emails concerning Cohen’s activities in the Middle East, including one, apparently written by Cohen himself, in which he discusses efforts to stir up trouble in Iran:
I wanted to follow-up and get a sense of your latest thinking on the proposed March trip to UAE, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The purpose of this trip is to exclusively engage the Iranian community to better understand the challenges faced by Iranians as part of one of our Google Ideas groups on repressive societies. Here is what we are thinking: Drive to Azerbaijan/Iranian border and engage the Iranian communities closer to the border (this is important because we need the Azeri Iranian perspective).
So here, it seems, we have Cohen basically setting up shop on the Iran-Azerbaijan border. It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia border Iran, while Azerbaijan also shares a border with Russia. A conflict breaking out in this region could easily spill over into Russia or Iran–both of which have called for the two warring parties to adhere to a 1994 ceasefire agreement.
But of course, such a spillover would advance certain geopolitical interests. For one thing, it would pose a dilemma for Russia at a time when it is engaged in Syria. Sergei Zheleznyak, vice speaker of the Russian state Duma, has voiced the view that a “third force” is behind developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Russian News Agency Tass :
“It is clear that the force that continues to fan the flames of war in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus dissatisfied with the peacekeeping and counter-terror success of Russia and our allies in Syria is interested in the speedy exacerbation of the protracted conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,” the parliamentarian wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.
According to Zheleznyak, “neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia essentially need this exacerbation now.” He noted that “there is every likelihood that this provocation has been organized by a third force,” adding that “information on its presence is beginning to leak out.” In view of this, he drew attention to the fact that “at night in the mountains it is enough to have a few trained armed persons who know the opposing sides’ balance of forces to provoke them to open reciprocal ‘reprisal’ fire.”
Most people probably assumed Zheleznyak, in talking about a “third force,” was referring to Turkey–and certainly Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet in Syria factors into the equation. But another element that perhaps figures even more prominently is the “clash of civilizations” that hardcore Zionists have long salivated over the thought of.
We might theorize that ISIS was created with a two-fold objective: one was to break apart Syria and bring about the overthrow of Bashar Assad, while the other was to jockey into existence a clash of civilizations between Christians and Muslims. In both of these objectives it has failed. Assad is still standing, and while the rise of ISIS certainly inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments in the West, it has not resulted in the all-out war between Christianity and Islam that would have played so well into the hands of the Jewish state.
But where the ISIS plan failed, the conflict in the Caucasus could well succeed. Armenia is predominantly a Christian state, while Azerbaijan is mostly Muslim. A war between these two could galvanize public opinion in the region along religious lines. Regional political alignments and the history of the Armenian genocide are also to be considered. Turkey, though sharing a border with Armenia, has openly sided with Azerbaijan. Russia, on the other hand, has remained officially neutral. However, an RT report filed April 5 shows journalist Murad Gazdiev reporting from inside Armenian Karabakh trenches.
Armenian Genocide–young girls crucified on crosses
So where is Israel in all of this? Officially it doesn’t seem to be saying much about it, but in May of 2015, the Jewish Daily Forward published an article entitled, “Why Israel’s Alliance with Azerbaijan is so Shortsighted.” The writer, Christopher Atamian, takes the Jewish state to task over its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide as well as for its lucrative arms contract with Azerbaijan, a country he refers to as an “authoritarian regime that is fueling regional conflict.”
“This is the same country that attempted to wipe out the entire Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh in 1991 before losing a bloody war against the Armenians,” he adds.
What he leaves unspoken, of course, is that Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide is tantamount to holocaust denial. More than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred from the years 1915 to 1922, and the Jewish state’s silence on the matter became a particularly hot-button issue last year on the genocide’s 100th anniversary.
Zheleznyak, the Duma vice speaker, seems for his own part to be offering sage advice to both parties in the current conflict, noting that Russia’s president as well as its government agencies “urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire and not to allow to draw them into someone else’s insidious game, as long as it is still possible.”
“As long as it’s still possible” is of course the key question. The more people die, the further recede the possibilities of the regional players not getting trapped or caught up in the “insidious game”–and the greater grow the chances of the conflict’s becoming the parabolic curve that ignites World War III.
Should that come to pass, maybe Diveroli and Packouz will vie for ringside seats–although it doesn’t appear they’ll especially want to sit next to each other. According to the article in Rolling Stone, the two had a major falling out.
“Listen, dude, if you f**k me, I’m going to f**k you,” one of them warned during an argument over money.
“Whatever,” replied the other.
One wonders why they didn’t name the movie “War Pigs” rather than “War Dogs.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been kosher enough.
In the past year in Israel we’ve seen an arson attack on a Palestinian home which left a mother, father and their 18-month-old baby dead; we have seen a video of Jewish settlers dancing and celebrating the attack by stabbing a photo of the baby; we have observed continued expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including one of the biggest land grabs in recent years–579 acres near the Dead Sea; and more recently we have seen a second video showing an Israeli soldier executing a wounded Palestinian with a gunshot to the head.
The execution video showed Israeli soldier Elior Azaria pump a bullet into the head of 21-year-old Abdul Fattah Sharif, as he lay on the ground wounded and barely moving. The murder took place on Purim, the Jewish holiday which celebrates the massacre of thousands of Gentiles, as told of in the Book of Esther. The next holiday on the Jewish calendar is Passover, coming up on April 22-23. The significance of Passover is laid out in twelfth chapter of Exodus:
On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn–both men and animals–and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord–a lasting ordinance… And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’
It seems that both Purim and Passover are in essence celebrations of the deaths of non-Jews. Suppose Gentiles observed holidays each year in which we celebrated Jewish deaths? What do you suppose would be said of it?
Whatever one’s views of Judaism may be (there are some admirable sentiments expressed in the Old Testament as well as some repellent ones), Zionism has morphed from the simple idea of a homeland for a specific group of people into a supremacist ideology that has had appalling consequences–not only for its victims but also even for its adherents, dehumanizing them to a degree never thought imaginable.
Zionism is the great Passover feast that has become a celebration of war.
Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”
Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros.
We are now seeing what looks like a new preparatory phase for the next round of “regime changes” with corruption allegations aimed at former Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The new anti-Putin allegations – ballyhooed by the UK Guardian and other outlets – are particularly noteworthy because the so-called “Panama Papers” that supposedly implicate him in offshore financial dealings never mention his name.
Or as the Guardianwrites: “Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage. The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.”
Note, if you will, the lack of specificity and the reliance on speculation: “a pattern”; “seemingly”; “suggest”; “appear.” Indeed, if Putin were not already a demonized figure in the Western media, such phrasing would never pass an editor’s computer screen. Indeed, the only point made in declarative phrasing is that “the president’s name does not appear in any of the records.”
A British media-watch publication, the Off-Guardian, which criticizes much of the work done at The Guardian, headlined its article on the Putin piece as “the Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody.”
But whatever the truth about Putin’s “corruption” or Lula’s, the journalistic point is that the notion of objectivity has long since been cast aside in favor of what’s useful as propaganda for Western interests.
Some of those Western interests now are worried about the growth of the BRICS economic system – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a competitor to the West’s G-7 and the International Monetary Fund. After all, control of the global financial system has been central to American power in the post-World War II world – and rivals to the West’s monopoly are not welcome.
What the built-in bias against these and other “unfriendly” governments means, in practical terms, is that one standard applies to a Russia or a Brazil, while a more forgiving measure is applied to the corruption of a U.S. or European leader.
Take, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s millions of dollars in payments in speaking fees from wealthy special interests that knew she was a good bet to become the next U.S. president. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clinton Stalls on Goldman-Sachs Speeches.”]
Or, similarly, the millions upon millions of dollars invested in super-PACS for Clinton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential hopefuls. That might look like corruption from an objective standard but is treated as just a distasteful aspect of the U.S. political process.
But imagine for a minute if Putin had been paid millions of dollars for brief speeches before powerful corporations, banks and interest groups doing business with the Kremlin. That would be held up as de facto proof of his illicit greed and corruption.
Losing Perspective
Also, when it’s a demonized foreign leader, any “corruption” will do, however minor. For example, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s denounced Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for his choice of eyewear: “The dictator in designer glasses,” declared Reagan, even as Nancy Reagan was accepting free designer gowns and free renovations of the White House funded by oil and gas interests.
Or, the “corruption” for a demonized leader can be a modest luxury, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “sauna” in his personal residence, a topic that got front-page treatment in The New York Times and other Western publications seeking to justify the violent coup that drove Yanukovych from office in February 2014.
Incidentally, both Ortega and Yanukovych had been popularly elected but were still targeted by the U.S. government and its operatives with violent destabilization campaigns. In the 1980s, the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra war killed some 30,000 people, while the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Ukraine sparked a civil war that has left some 10,000 people dead. Of course, in both cases, Official Washington blamed Moscow for all the trouble.
In both cases, too, the politicians and operatives who gained power as a result of the conflicts were arguably more corrupt than the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Yanukovych’s government. The Nicaraguan Contras, whose violence helped pave the way for the 1990 election of U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro, were deeply implicated in cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]
Today, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian government is wallowing in corruption so deep that it has provoked a new political crisis. [See Consortiumnews’com’s “Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine.”]
Ironically, one of the politicians actually named in the Panama Papers for having established a shadowy offshore account is the U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, although he got decidedly second-billing to the unnamed Putin. (Poroshenko denied there was anything improper in his offshore financial arrangements.)
Double Standards
Mainstream Western journalism no longer even tries to apply common standards to questions about corruption. If you’re a favored government, there might be lamentations about the need for more “reform” – which often means slashing pensions for the elderly and cutting social programs for the poor – but if you’re a demonized leader, then the only permissible answer is criminal indictment and/or “regime change.”
One stark example of these double standards is the see-no-evil attitude toward the corruption of Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is touted endlessly in the Western media as the paragon of Ukrainian good governance and reform. The documented reality, however, is that Jaresko enriched herself through her control of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund that was supposed to help the people of Ukraine build their economy.
According to the terms of the $150 million investment fund created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jaresko’s compensation was supposed to be capped at $150,000 a year, a pay package that many Americans would envy. But it was not enough for Jaresko, who first simply exceeded the limit by hundreds of thousands of dollars and then moved her compensation off-books as she amassed total annual pay of $2 million or more.
The documentation of this scheming is clear. I have published multiple stories citing the evidence of both her excessive compensation and her legal strategies for covering up evidence of alleged wrongdoing. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich” and “Carpetbagging Crony Capitalism in Ukraine.”]
Despite the evidence, not a single mainstream Western news outlet has followed up on this information even as Jaresko is touted as a “reform” candidate for Ukrainian prime minister.
This disinterest is similar to the blinders that The New York Times and other major Western newspapers put on when they were assessing whether Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in a coup in February 2014 or just wandered off and forgot to return.
In a major “investigative” piece, the Times concluded there was no coup in Ukraine while ignoring the evidence of a coup, such as the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who they would put into power. “Yats is the guy,” said Nuland – and surprise, surprise, Arseniy Yatsenyuk ended up as prime minister.
The Times also ignored the observation of George Friedman, president of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, who noted that the Ukraine coup was “the most blatant coup in history.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]
The Propaganda Weapon
The other advantage of “corruption” as a propaganda weapon to discredit certain leaders is that we all assume that there is plenty of corruption in governments as well as in the private sector all around the world. Alleging corruption is like shooting large fish crowded into a small barrel. Granted, some barrels might be more crowded than others but the real decision is whose barrel you choose.
That’s part of the reason why the U.S. government has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “journalism” organizations, train political activists and support “non-governmental organizations” that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. For instance, before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.
But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the State Department and USAID. Last year, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the globe, including “journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media.”
USAID estimated its budget for “media strengthening programs in over 30 countries” at $40 million annually, including aiding “independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries,” In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in “mobile phone and website security,” which sounds a bit like an operation to thwart the local government’s intelligence gathering, an ironic position for the U.S. with its surveillance obsession, including prosecuting whistleblowers based on evidence that they talked to journalists.
USAID, working with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in “investigative journalism” that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.
Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his “findings” always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In other words, the U.S. government has a robust strategy for deploying direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the first Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of “information warfare,” including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly “independent” entities and cut-outs present U.S. propaganda to a cynical public that would reject much of what it hears from government but may trust “citizen journalists” and “bloggers.”
But the larger danger from this perversion of journalism is that it sets the stage for “regime changes” that destabilize whole countries, thwart real democracy (i.e., the will of the people), and engender civil warfare. Today’s neoconservative dream of mounting a “regime change” in Moscow is particularly dangerous to the future of both Russia and the world.
Regardless of what you think about President Putin, he is a rational political leader whose legendary sangfroid makes him someone who is not prone to emotional decisions. His leadership style also appeals to the Russian people who overwhelmingly favor him, according to public opinion polls.
While the American neocons may fantasize that they can generate enough economic pain and political dissension inside Russia to achieve Putin’s removal, their expectation that he will be followed by a pliable leader like the late President Boris Yeltsin, who will let U.S. operatives back in to resume plundering Russia’s riches, is almost certainly a fantasy.
The far more likely possibility is that – if a “regime change” could somehow be arranged – Putin would be replaced by a hard-line nationalist who might think seriously about unleashing Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the West again tries to defile Mother Russia. For me, it’s not Putin who’s the worry; it’s the guy after Putin.
So, while legitimate questions about Putin’s “corruption” – or that of any other political leader – should be pursued, the standards of evidence should not be lowered just because he or anyone else is a demonized figure in the West. There should be single not double standards.
Western media outrage about “corruption” should be expressed as loudly against political and business leaders in the U.S. or other G-7 countries as it is toward those in the BRICS.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The defeat of the Kirchnerists in the recent presidential elections in Argentina was largely due to the publicity and propaganda advantages held by Mauricio Macri, the leader of the Republican Proposal party. Those advantages were provided by the Clarín media group that dominates public communications in Argentina. Macri was called the «US candidate», and this has proven true since he took office. Barack Obama came to Buenos Aires on an official visit and was full of optimism when he spoke of the upcoming golden era in the US-Argentine relations.
In order to earn this relationship, Macri took a confrontational tack toward Venezuela and what’s more, made it clear that he was carefully «studying the consequences» of the Kirchners’ 12-year rule. Now the accusations are growing louder against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner over her involvement in the murder of Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. Nisman was planning to accuse Fernandez as well as Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman of conspiring to «safeguard the impunity» of the Iranians who were involved in the bombing, according to one version …
The tabloids have published the «revelations» of Miriam Quiroga, who was Néstor Kirchner’s secretary as well as his alleged mistress. Her disclosures have sparked rumors that now proliferate about corruption, money-laundering, and the involvement of Cristina Fernandez and her family. It is entirely possible that the NSA will manufacture yet more materials in order to prevent Christina from taking part in future presidential elections. It does not matter to the orchestrators of this dirty war that the materials obtained through «bugging» are always fragmentary, superficial, and must be extensively cross-checked. Provocateurs are focused solely on spreading scandalous accusations that can feed a media frenzy lasting for years.
* * *
Bolivian President Evo Morales, with whom the US embassy in La Paz has a long history of grievances (if for no other reason than the 2008 expulsion of Ambassador Philip Goldberg), was not immune to the exposés that US intelligence agencies concoct in order to undermine the credibility of politicians. The Feb. 21 referendum on amendments to the Bolivian constitution allowing the president to run for a third consecutive term ended unfavorably for Morales. Voters were swayed by the story of the president’s former partner, Gabriela Zapata. The president had stated that they had had a son who died in infancy, but Zapata claimed otherwise – that the boy was supposedly alive and being cared for by her family. This electrifying news is now being thoroughly milked by the tabloids.
The media has also publicized information about the help provided by Morales in order to secure Zapata, who lacks a higher education, an executive position at the Chinese company CAMC. The multi-million-dollar contracts won by that company are attributed to Morales’ influence. The CIA’s hand is clearly visible in the scandal, because this news was publicized by the journalist Carlos Valverde Bravo, who has in the past headed the intelligence service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, while earning a living on the side by cooperating with the biggest drug cartel in Bolivia (in the 1990s). Some members of the cartel used authorization documents issued by Valverde when transporting cocaine abroad. After a lurid story about sending drugs to the US inside decorative figurines, he was arrested and sentenced to several years in prison. After his release, he began a career as a radio journalist and is now regularly invited to receptions at the US embassy, where he is provided with the subjects for his «targeted exposés».
* * *
Among the Latin American politicians causing unease in Washington is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a moderate nationalist and the most likely contender for victory in Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections. It is possible that he could be transformed into a «Mexican populist». Obrador has repeatedly jockeyed for that highest state office, but the backroom machinations and manipulation of the vote counting affected the final outcome. Particularly questionable was the defeat from the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, in 2012. Obrador’s newest bid is predicted to be successful, and it will be difficult for his enemies to block it using their old tricks. Political associates and bloggers who are sympathetic to Obrador constantly warn him that his life is in danger – because that is how political rivals are traditionally disposed of in Mexico.
Obrador is often asked if he is afraid of being assassinated and why he does not request a more substantial security detail. Without downplaying the dangers, he answers imperturbably, «He who owes nothing, fears nothing. If criminals are intent on doing something, they will corrupt every institution of power in order to realize their objectives. Thus, the only way to prevail over violence is through peaceful social mobilization. And it’s best if that takes the form of voting, because that shows that citizens are sick of the corruption that plagues their country».
Is Obrador sufficiently aware of the threat US intelligence agencies might pose to him? No question. Evidently this is why he has always distanced himself from Hugo Chávez. When the Venezuelan leader died on March 5, 2013, Obrador tweeted, «I had no ties to Chávez. My enemies used his image to attack me». Will this help him to dispel Washington’s mistrust and once again vie for the presidency? That’s doubtful. The US intelligence community has plenty of ways to bulldoze Obrador’s political career …
The unprecedented upsurge in violence along the Line of Contact between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh has raised universal concern that a larger conflict might be brewing, with some analysts seeing it as an outgrowth of Turkey’s destabilizing anti-Russian policies over the past couple of months.
As attractive as it may be to believe such that Azerbaijan is behaving as a total puppet of the West, such an explanation is only a superficial description of what is happening and importantly neglects to factor in Baku’s recent foreign policy pivot over the past year. It’s not to necessarily suggest that Russia’s CSTO ally Armenia is to blame for the latest ceasefire violations, but rather to raise the point that this unfolding series of militantly destabilizing events is actually a lot more complex than initially meets the eye, although the general conclusion that the US is reaping an intrinsic strategic benefit from all of this is clearly indisputable.
Instead of beginning the research from a century ago and rehashing the dueling historic interpretations that both sides have over Nagorno-Karabakh, the article at hand begins at the present day and proceeds from the existing on-the-ground state of affairs after the 1994 ceasefire, whereby the disputed territory has de-facto been administered as its own unrecognized state with strong Armenian support in all sectors. There’s no attempt to advocate one side or denigrate the other, but rather to objectively understand the situation as it is and forecast its unfolding developments.
In keeping with the task at hand, it’s essential that the point of analytical departure be an overview of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s latest geopolitical moves in the year preceding the latest clashes. Afterwards, it’s required that an analysis be given about the limits to Russia’s CSTO commitment to Armenia, which thus helps to put Russia’s active diplomatic moves into the appropriate perspective. Following that, Part II of the article raises awareness about the US’ Reverse Brzezinski stratagem of peripheral quagmire-like destabilization along the post-Soviet rim and how the recent outbreak of violence is likely part and parcel of this calculated plan. Finally, the two-part series concludes with the suggested appeal that Armenia and Azerbaijan replace the stale OSCE Minsk Group conflict resolution format with a fresh analogue via their newly shared dialogue partner status under the SCO.
Not What One Would Expect
Over the past year or so, Armenia and Azerbaijan’s geopolitical trajectories haven’t exactly been moving along the course that casual commentators would expect that they would. Before beginning this section, it’s necessary to preface it with a disclaimer that the author is not referring to the average Armenian or Azeri citizen in the following analysis, but rather is using their respective countries’ names interchangeably with their given governments, so “Armenia” in this instance refers to the Yerevan political establishment while “Azerbaijan” relates to its Baku counterpart. This advisory note is needed in order to proactively prevent the reader from misunderstanding the author’s words and analyses, since the topic is full of highly emotionally charged elements and generally evokes a strong reaction among many, especially those of either of the two ethnicities.
Armenia:
The general trend is that the prevailing geopolitical stereotypes about Armenia and Azerbaijan are not as accurate as one would immediately think, and that neither country adheres to them to the degree that one would initially expect. It’s true that Armenia is a staunch and loyal Russian CSTO ally which maintains a presence of 5,000 troops, a handful of jets and helicopters, a forthcoming air defense shield, and possibly soon even Iskander missiles there, but it’s been progressively diversifying its foreign policy tangent by taking strong strides in attempting to reach an Association Agreement with the EU despite its formal Eurasian Union membership.
This has yet to be clinched, but the resolute intent that Yerevan clearly demonstrated in May 2015 raises uncomfortable questions about the extent to which its decision-making elite may have been co-opted by Western influences. The author was so concerned about this eventuality that he published a very controversial analysis that month explaining the various ploys by which the West has sought to woo Armenia over to its side, including the shedding of crocodile tears for its genocide victims during their centenary remembrance commemoration.
As is the established pattern which was most clearly proven by Ukraine, the more intensely that a geostrategically positioned country flirts with the West, the more susceptible that it is to a forthcoming Color Revolution attempt, so it’s unsurprising in hindsight that the “Electric Yerevan” destabilization was commenced just one month after the Armenian President was publicly hobnobbing with so many of his Western “partners”. That anti-government push was a proto-manifestation of what the author later described in an unrelated work as “Color Revolution 1.5” technologies which seek to use “civil society” and “anti-corruption” elements as experimental triggers for testing the catalyzation of large-scale regime change movements. The geopolitical end goal in all of this, as the author wrote in his “Electric Yerevan” piece cited above, was to get Armenian nationalists such as Nikol Pashinyan into power so that they can provoke a continuation war in Nagorno-Karabakh that might conceivably end up dragging in Russia. They thankfully didn’t succeed in this, and the sitting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has repeatedly underscored that Armenia does not want to see a conflict escalation in the disputed territory.
Strangely, despite the regime change attempt that the West tried to engineer against Armenia, Sargsyan still declared in early 2016 that “Armenia’s cooperation and development of relations with the EU remain a priority for Armenia’s foreign policy” and “expressed gratitude to the EU for their assistance in carrying out reforms in Armenia.” Also, the EU’s External Action Service reports that the two sides formally relaunched their negotiation process with one another on 7 December with the aim of reaching a “new agreement (that) will replace the current EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation agreement.”
An EU analyst remarked in March of this year that he obviously doesn’t believe that it will be identical to the Association Agreement that the EU had offered to Armenia prior to its Eurasian Union ascension, but that of course doesn’t mean that it couldn’t share many similarities with its predecessor and create geopolitical complications for Yerevan’s economic alliance with Moscow. It must be emphasized at this point that while the Armenian state is still closely linked to Russia on the military-political level and formally part of the Eurasian Union, it is provocatively taking strong economic steps in the direction of the EU and the general Western community, disturbingly raising the prospect that its schizophrenic policies might one day engender a crisis of loyalty where Yerevan is forced to choose between Moscow and Brussels much as Kiev was artificially made to do so as well (and possibly with similar pro-Western urban terrorist consequences for the “wrong choice”).
Azerbaijan:
On the other hand, while Armenia was bucking the conventional stereotype by moving closer to the West, Azerbaijan was also doing something similar by realigning itself closer to Russia. Baku’s relations with Washington, Brussels, Ankara, and even Tel Aviv (which it supplies 40% of its energy to via the BTC pipeline) are well documented, as is its geostrategic function as a non-Russian energy source for the EU (particularly in the context of the Southern Corridor project), so there’s no use regurgitating well-known and established facts inside of this analysis. Rather, what’s especially interesting to pay attention to is how dramatically the ties between Azerbaijan and the West have declined over the past year. Even more fascinating is that all of it was so unnecessary and had barely anything to do with Baku’s own initiative.
What happened was that Brussels started a soft power campaign against Baku by alleging that the latter had been violating “human rights” and “democratic” principles, which resulted in Azerbaijan boldly announcing in September 2015 that it was cancelling the planned visit of a European Commission delegation and considering whether it “should review [its] ties with the European Union, where anti-Azeri and anti-Islam tendencies are strong.” For a country that is stereotypically seen as being under the Western thumb, that’s the complete opposite of a subservient move and one that exudes defiance to the West. Earlier that year in February 2015, Quartz online magazine even exaggeratedly fear mongered that “Azerbaijan is transforming into a mini-Russia” because of its strengthening domestic security capabilities in dealing with asymmetrical threats.
While Azerbaijan’s resistance certainly has its pragmatic limits owing to the country’s entrenched strategic and energy infrastructural relationship with the West over the past couple of decades, it’s telling that it would so publicly rebuke the West in the fashion that it did and suggests that the problems between Azerbaijan and the West are deeper than just a simple spat. Part of the reason for the West’s extreme dislike of the Azerbaijani government has been its recent pragmatic and phased emulation of Russia’s NGO security legislation which aims to curb the effectiveness of intelligence-controlled proxy organizations in fomenting Color Revolutions. Having lost its influence over the country via the post-modern “grassroots-‘bottom-up’” approach, it’s very plausible that the US and its allies decided to find a way to instigate Nagorno-Karabakh clashes as a means of regaining their sway over their wayward Caspian ‘ally’.
Amidst this recent falling out between Azerbaijan and the West and even in the years preceding it, Moscow has been able to more confidently position itself as a reliable, trustworthy, and non-discriminatory partner which would never interfere with Baku’s domestic processes or base its bilateral relations with the country on whatever its counterpart chooses to do at home. Other than the unmistakable security influence that Russia has had on Azerbaijan’s NGO legislation, the two sides have also increased their military-technical cooperation through a surge of agreements that totaled $4 billion by 2013. By 2015, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that Azerbaijan’s total arms spending for the five-year period of 2011-2014 had increased by 249%, with 85% of its supplies coming from Russia.
In parallel to that, it also asserted that Russia’s weapons exports to Europe for 2011-2015 increased by 264%, “mainly due to deliveries to Azerbaijan”. It’s plain to see that Russia isn’t treating Azerbaijan as though it were an unredeemable Western puppet state, but is instead applying a shrewd and calculated military balancing strategy between it and Armenia. While unconfirmed by official sources, the head of the Political Researches Department of the Yerevan-based Caucasian Institute Sergey Minasian claimed in 2009 that Russia was supplying its Gyumri base in Armenia via air transit permission from Azerbaijan after Georgia banned such overflights through its territory after the 2008 war. If this is true, then it would suggest that Russian-Azeri strategic relations are at their most trusted level in post-independence history and that Baku has full faith that Moscow will not do anything to upset the military balance in the Southern Caucasus, which of course includes the paranoid fear that some Azeri observers have expressed about Russia conspiring with Armenia to wage another war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Strategic Calculations and CSTO Limits
Russia And Armenia:
Everything that was written above likely comes as a complete shock to the casual observer of international affairs because it flies in the face of presumed “logic”, but this just goes to show that the prevailing geopolitical stereotypes about Armenia and Azerbaijan are inaccurate and do not fully reflect the present state of affairs. The common denominator between the two rival states is their evolving relationship with Russia, which as was just described, appears to be progressively moving in opposite directions. Again, the author does not intend to give the impression that this reflects popular sentiment in either country or its expatriate and diaspora communities, especially Armenia and its affiliated ethnic nationals, since the general attitude inside the country (despite the highly publicized “Electric Yerevan” failed Color Revolution attempt) and for the most part by its compatriots outside of it could safely be described as favorable to Russia. This makes Yerevan’s pro-Western advances all the more puzzling, but that only means that the answer to this paradox lies more in the vision (and possible monetary incentives) of the country’s leadership than the will of its people. Still, the situation is not critical and has yet to approach the point where the pragmatic and trusted state of bilateral relations is endangered.
Russia And Azerbaijan:
That being said, to many conventional observers, Russia’s close military cooperation with Azerbaijan might seem just as peculiar as Armenia’s intimation of a forthcoming pro-Western economic pivot, but that too can be explained by a strategic calculation, albeit one of a much more pragmatic and understandable nature. Russia has aspired to play the role of a pivotal balancing force between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and truth be told and much to the dismay of many Armenians, it did approve of UNSC Resolutions affirming Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity along its internationally recognized borders, specifically the most recent 62/243 one from 2008 which “Reaffirms continued respect and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders” and “Demands the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all the occupied territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan”.
Nagorno-Karabakh map
Geopolitical Consistency:
What’s happening isn’t that Russia is “betraying Armenia” like some overactive nationalist pundits like to allege, but that it’s maintaining what has been its consistent position since the conflict began and is abiding by its stated international guiding principle in supporting territorial integrity. Key to this understanding is that the conception of territorial integrity is a guiding, but not an irreversible, tenet of Russian foreign policy, and the 2008 Russian peace-enforcement operation in Georgia that led to the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the 2014 reunification with Crimea prove that extenuating circumstances can result in a change of long-standing policy on a case-by-case basis. This can be interpreted as meaning that Moscow at this stage (operative qualifier) does not support the independence of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, but to be fair, neither does Yerevan, although the Armenian state just recently repeated its previously stated position that it could recognize the Armenian-populated region as a separate country if the present hostilities with Azerbaijan increase. Therefore, the main condition that could push Armenia to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state and possibly even pressure Russia to follow suit would be the prolonged escalation of conflict around the Line of Contact.
The Unification Conundrum:
As much as some participants and international observers might think of such a move as being historically just and long overdue, Russia would likely have a much more cautious approach to any unilateral moves that Armenia makes about recognizing the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. To repeat what was earlier emphasized about Russia’s political approach to this conflict, this would not amount to a “betrayal” of Armenia but instead would be a pragmatic and sober assessment of the global geostrategic environment and the likely fact that such a move could instantly suck Russia into the war. As it stands, Russia has a mutual defense commitment to Armenia which makes it responsible for protecting its ally from any aggression against it, however this only corresponds to the territory that Russia internationally recognizes as Armenia’s own, thereby excluding any Armenian forces and passport holders in Nagorno-Karabakh.
If Armenia recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state, it would likely initiate a rapidly progressing process whereby the two Armenian-populated entities vote for unification, which would then place Russia in the very uncomfortable position of having to consider whether it will recognize such a unilateral move by its ally and thereby extend its mutual defense umbrella over what would by then be newly incorporated and Russian-recognized Armenian territory. On the one hand, Moscow wouldn’t want to be perceived as “betraying” its centuries-long Armenian ally and thenceforth engendering its unshakable hate for the foreseeable future, but on the other, it might have certain reservations about getting directly involved in the military conflict as a warfighting participant and forever losing the positive New Cold War inroads that it has made with Baku.
Russian-Azeri relations, if pragmatically managed along the same constructive trajectory that they’ve already been proceeding along, could lead to Moscow gaining a strategic foothold over an important Turkish, EU, and Israeli energy supplier and thus giving Russia the premier possibility of indirectly exerting its influence towards them vis-à-vis its ties with Baku. In any case, the Russian Foreign Ministry would prefer not to be placed on the spot and in such a zero-sum position where it is forced to choose between honoring its Armenian ally’s unilateral unification with Nagorno-Karabakh and abandoning its potential outpost of transregional strategic influence in Azerbaijan, or pursuing its gambit to acquire grand transregional influence via Azerbaijan at the perceived expense of its long-standing South Caucasus ally and risk losing its ultra-strategic military presence in the country.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Question is thus a quandary of epic and far-reaching geostrategic proportions for Russia, which is doing everything that it can to neutrally negotiate between the two sides in offsetting this utterly destabilizing scenario and preventing it from being forced to choose a disastrous zero-sum commitment in what will be argued in Part II to likely be an externally third-party/US-constructed military-political dilemma. Furthermore, both Armenia and Azerbaijan want to retain Russian support and neither wants to risk losing it, which also explains why Azerbaijan has yet to unleash its full military potential against the Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and why Armenia hasn’t unilaterally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh or made an effort to politically unite with it. Conclusively, it can be surmised that the only actor which wants to force this false choice of “either-or” onto Russia is the US, which always benefits whenever destabilization strikes Moscow’s periphery and its Eurasian adversary is forced into a pressing geopolitical dilemma.
Is waterboarding torture? The CIA ex-chief, in an interview with Al Jazeera, believes it depends on who uses it. Should Syria’s Assad administer it – then it’s torture. If the CIA uses it on terror suspects possessing “lifesaving” data – it’s not.
The waterboarding interrogation technique, which consists of a series of “near drownings” that left terror suspects “completely unresponsive” was not torture, former CIA Director Michael Hayden told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan in a recent interview. He cited the conclusion of three attorneys general.
Hayden said, though, that the “current president of the United States” believes waterboarding is torture.
As for himself, Hayden said he “has not been forced to take this decision.”
“What I have done is reflect the legal opinion that was extant at the time these decisions were made,” the former CIA head said, noting he has been asked about his opinion on torture countless times.
Pressed by the interviewer, Michael Hayden said that should, for instance, President Bashar Assad use waterboarding on Syrian rebels, it would be a “completely different” story, since the CIA did waterboarding with medical personnel present and counted the “pours sessions.”
“If President Assad did it according to the rules the CIA used, if President Assad did it with medical personnel present… this is the CIA way,” Hayden told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan.
The American nation felt itself “under very serious threat” when CIA agents were prying vital information out of three prisoners, he insisted.
“I’m not saying it’s torture. You’re not going to get me to say it’s torture,” Hayden concluded.
An executive summary of a 6,700-page US Senate Intelligence report on CIA interrogation techniques under the George W. Bush administration made public last year exposed brutality the US authorities were probably unaware of, sparking outrage in the US and around the world.
US federal judges are now in the process of making a decision on whether to declassify the report in full, which would reveal whether the CIA abused its authority while interrogating suspects.
What on earth was the CIA doing putting plastic high explosive charges on schoolbuses and in hidden places in a Virginia public school in a “test” of K-9 dogs reportedly belonging to the Agency itself?
The story of the secret “test” broke because an alert mechanic doing a routine check on one of the Loudon County School District’s schoolbuses found a package of what turned out to be plastic explosive, packed in a plastic wrapper, jammed down in among some of the rubber hoses and electric wires around the engine. It had allegedly “fallen” from where it had originally been placed, was missed by the dogs and their handlers, and remained where it was stuck for two days, while the bus was unwittingly used to deliver some 26 young children to and from school on eight separate bus runs totaling 145 miles of driving.
I called the CIA’s “public information” office on Friday to ask for clarification as to why the CIA, which does not have a domestic policing function, would be operating, and testing, a K-9 bomb-detecting unit, given that such tasks in the US would normally be handled either by state and local police agencies, or by the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). The office, though it was mid-day, was not answering its phones, and only had a voice mail recording, on which I identified myself as a reporter, left my contact information and requested a response on deadline. No surprise: I was not called back with an answer, and do not anticipate receiving one from an agency that is infamous for its secrecy. (The standard CIA response in my experience, when I’ve received one at all, is: “We have no response to that question.”)
Still, even for a notoriously opaque and obtuse government agency, this is a truly bizarre incident that cries out for answers.
If the goal is testing the ability of dogs to detect hidden explosives, there is no need to run that test in a real school and in the engine compartments of real buses that transport real children, or to place such charges, as the CIA also reportedly did, in hidden locations inside a real school building. (Actually, since what’s being tested is the dogs’ smelling ability, real C-4 wasn’t needed either — only objects that had been placed in contact with the compound, or wrappers from the charges that would have carried the odor on them.) People may benefit in training exercises when the tests are tricked out to appear more real-life, but dogs don’t need that kind of reality-theater environment to hone or test their skills. Any old bus, or for that matter a rental truck, could have been used for the job. The engine compartment for a truck is exactly the same as for a bus, and dogs don’t care whether the body color of a vehicle being searched is yellow or not (they’re color-blind after all!), or whether it has a big box behind the cab, or two rows of seats. Ditto to using a functioning school building. Any building, including one of the CIA’s own buildings at its Langley headquarters, or on “The Farm” where agents are trained, would serve as well as a hiding place for explosive charges.
At best, using a real local school and real school buses was an idiotic decision by CIA administrators.
Plastic explosive, as the Washington Post explained in a lengthy if fairly credulous article on the incident [1], while highly explosive, is also quite stable, requiring both a very high temperature and a shock wave to explode. The compound is, however, also flammable, and even if it didn’t explode if ignited, would act as an accelerant if there were an engine fire on a bus, or somewhere in a school building, making such a fire far worse and far harder to control. Plus, while this is being called a test, and while we are being assured that there was no detonator included along with the planted charges, how do we really know that is true? After all, the whole idea of using a real school and real school buses was to simulate reality. How far did the testers want to take that reality?
Did the same people who thought it was important for the K-9 dogs to have yellow buses to work with think they should also see wires and detonators hooked up to the charges they were sniffing for? When something this apparently stupid is done, anything is possible, and given the CIA’s obsessive secrecy, we’re not going to get an answer unless some public body (Congress?, a Virginia legislative committee?) investigates and demands answers under oath.
Of course, there are darker possibilities to consider too, when we discover an incident like this.
There is plenty of evidence that over the past two decades, the US government and its intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have engaged in a number of so-called “false flag” operations, usually portrayed as “tests” gone wrong, or as “stings” designed to lure out alleged terrorists — though these latter operations usually turn out on investigation to have been wholly government-created incidents where low-wattage victims are talked into participating in a terrorism action either for pay, or under the belief that they are working for the government. There are just too many occasions when some crazy terror plot either gets prominently “uncovered” and “prevented,” or actually is attempted right when the government could use some increased public sense of panic to help pass some new law diminishing Constitutionally-protected freedoms, or higher spending on war and government intelligence agencies.
As one CIA veteran offers, “The only ‘innocent’ explanation as to why the agency was training locals on this is that the agency has more money than it knows what to do with, whereas others are not that flush,” but this source adds, “There are a host of other, more sinister possible explanations. This needs to be looked into.”
There are certainly enough bozos in the US government’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, for me to believe that this school explosives “testing exercise” was just a really stupid idea gone wrong. But I’m also suspicious enough to believe that it could have been something much more insidious that didn’t go as planned only because of the alertness of one school district mechanic.
The Washington Post quotes a CIA statement issued about the incident as saying the CIA plans to take “immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures in its K-9 program” and promising that it will investigate its K-9 training program.
That’s clearly not enough. The CIA is the last agency that should be relied on to investigate itself about anything.
Last December the Venezuelan journalist José Vicente Rangel went on his television program to talk about how the Pentagon has created the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) that is spreading disinformation about Venezuela. Specialized centers such as CIMA also go after other governments that Washington finds unpalatable.
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, devoted one of his weekly speeches to the mudslinging being directed against his government via social networks. Social networks are now the principal platform for media warfare.
A mass media law has been in effect in Ecuador since June 2013, which greatly limits any potentially hostile propaganda campaign, including «exposés». Typically, such campaigns are intended to compromise politicians and other figures friendly to the government. The Superintendent’s Office for Information and Communications, which monitors and assesses the work of the media, is responsible for enforcing the law in Ecuador.
Ecuador’s penal code includes a chapter titled «Crimes associated with mass media transgressions», which decrees that editors and publishers are responsible for the publication of defamatory or offensive materials. Ecuador is probably the only country in Latin America that has managed to set some sensible guidelines for the work of the media.
Currently the Western Hemisphere is being inundated with a flood of «exposés» featuring the names of politicians who are under attack by Washington. Apparently the CIA and NSA are pursuing a comprehensive plan aimed at getting many influential figures deposed and prosecuted.
Compromising materials on Nicolás Maduro, Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, Cristina Kirchner, and Evo Morales were publicized by US intelligence agencies in one fell swoop without missing a beat, and those are now being used by a pro-American fifth column in order to destabilize Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. That blow is primarily aimed at leaders who are rejecting the neoliberal doctrine, pursuing social reform policies that will benefit many different strata of the population.
* * *
In Brazil, a scandal is unfolding over the convoluted issue of petrodollar-laundering and corruption, as well as the use of «undeclared revenue» to finance the election campaigns of the ruling Workers’ Party. Former president Lula da Silva (2003-2010) was detained for several hours and questioned by an investigator, accused of taking bribes from the company Petrobras. Specifically, Lula was asked to explain what money he had planned to use for the purchase of an apartment that he had allegedly looked in secret. Sixty Brazilian politicians, governors, and businessmen are named in the case. The investigation cast a shadow on Dilma Rousseff, the country’s current president. Brazil’s opposition media, under the control of the media holding company O Globo, claimed that Rousseff chaired Petrobras at a time when corrupt schemes were flourishing in the company. According to investigators, the contracts signed by senior managers hinged on the kickback percentage that was personally offered to them.
At the center of the crusade against Dilma is Aécio Neves, her recent rival in the presidential election and a senator and regular visitor to the US embassy. His agreement to «collaborate» with the Americans is still in effect, thus much of the NSA material from the dossiers on Lula and Dilma has been placed at the disposal of Neves’ people in Brazil’s courts and government agencies, and publications owned by the O Globo holding company have provided extensive coverage of these materials. As a result, Dilma’s approval ratings have dropped. Her nine-party coalition, With the Strength of the People, has disintegrated. This was in large part due to the fact that some of the Workers’ Party staff were vulnerable to accusations.
A campaign replete with serious problems for Brazil was unleashed. Brazil’s former finance minister, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, claims, «Unexpectedly there emerged a collective hatred on the part of the upper strata of society – the rich – against the party and the president. It wasn’t anxiety or fear, but hatred. Hatred, because for the first time we have a center-left government that has remained leftist. Despite all the compromises, it has not changed. Hatred, because the government has demonstrated a strong preference for the workers and the poor».
Sensitive information about close relatives can be co-opted if no justification can be found to attack a politician that US operatives have decided to victimize. That is what the DEA, CIA, and US prosecutors are doing to the nephews of Cilia Flores, the wife of President Maduro. Those young men were arrested by police in Haiti and handed over to the US on charges of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. It will take time to prove that they were framed by DEA agents who staged scenes designed to entrap their «targets» in illegal deals, and the propaganda campaign against the family of President Maduro is already in full swing. According to Cilia Flores, the lawyers for the accused will prove that in this incident, the DEA operatives in Venezuela have committed crimes.
In 2012, there were nearly 15,000 demonstrations throughout Spain, amounting to around 40 per day. In 2013, there were 4,500 demonstrations in Madrid alone: an increase of 1,000 from the year before. Protest increased on a par with the continual disintegration of full employment and the implementation of severe austerity programmes accompanied with a lack of government transparency and accusations of corruption at the very highest level.
In April last year, Amnesty International (AI) was clearly getting concerned with how the authorities in Spain were dealing with peaceful public protest in Spain by saying:
“With threats of fines or threats of being beaten, the government is trying to stigmatise and criminalise people who are just practising their rights.”
Amnesty International investigated and discovered that although the vast majority of protesters were indeed peaceful, police treated the protests as riots and the people in them in the same manner as those who incited violence. In many cases, the police had used excessive force to confront protesters. AI’s report entitled Spain: Protests and the suffocating embrace of the law makes for sobering reading.
By June, Spain officially went police state with a series of “gag laws” that effectively criminalised peaceful public protest. Among the many new repressive stipulations was the implementation of €30,000-€600,000 fines for “unauthorised protests,” which can be combined for maximum effect with a €600-€300,000 fine for “disrupting public events.”
This awful set of authoritarian statutes arose from Spain’s position as a flashpoint for anti-austerity protests. The European Union did not want to see a precursor to the Occupy Wall Street movement gaining significant ground in its territorial fiefdom and has allowed breaches of internationally recognised human rights laws to be perpetrated right under its nose. Fines and mistreatment await anyone who refuses to recognise authority with the respect it’s forcibly requiring citizens to demonstrate.
The law also extended its anti-protest punishments to social media, where users can face similar fines for doing nothing more than encouraging or organizing a protest. Failing to present ID when commanded is another fine. And then there’s this:
Showing a “lack of respect” to those in uniform or failing to assist security forces in the prevention of public disturbances could result in an individual fine of between €600 and €30,000.
What could go wrong? The Spanish news outlet eldiario.es filed a request for information which revealed an alarming number of penalties and sanctions issued since the Gag Law, otherwise known as the Public Safety Act, was passed on July 1, 2015.
In the space between July 1st 2015, the date the new laws were enforced and January 28, 2016 police have grabbed the opportunity with both hands and sanctioned or fined 40,000 people for “disrespecting” law enforcement. Some of the numbers include; 6,217 for ‘disrespecting the police”, 3,700 for disobedience to authority and 2,027 for causing public disorder.
“Now the government is judge and jury on a number of violations that were previously in the hands of independent judges,” says Joaquin Bosch, spokesperson for Jueces por la Democracia (Judges for Democracy). Bosch’s critisisms continue – “Article 52 of the law states that the complaint of a police officer constitutes “sufficient evidentiary basis” to take legal action. “In the judicial field, the cop’s word is not enough, it has to be proven.”
Spain is one of the least violent countries in the world but other controversial articles of the law are extended to areas similar to that of totalitarian states. There are penalties just for refusing to provide identification, taking photos of police or other objects that could identify a member of the security forces or for obstructing authority in compliance with administrative or judicial decisions, including people who try to prevent an eviction, for example.
“The excessive use of force by Spanish police and plans to strengthen repressive legislation are a damning indictment of the Spanish government’s determination to crush peaceful protest. The police have repeatedly used batons and rubber bullets against demonstrators, injuring and maiming protestors and by-standers alike. The police act with complete impunity, while peaceful demonstrators and leaders of social movements are continually harassed, stigmatized, beaten, sometimes arrested to face criminal charges, imprisonment and fines.”
And as one peaceful protestor, Ester Quitana said after being hit in the face with a rubber bullet fired by the police – “Due to the impact of the rubber bullet, I have a deformed nasal septum, injuries in my mouth and my ear, and have lost sensation on the left side of my face. I am still under psychological treatment, my daily routine has been affected, as well as the way I am connected with people, how I am seen by them. I’ve been denied any kind of social benefits I have applied for.”
Maria, for protesting against budget cuts was ¢1,000 told AI “They want to destroy the leadership of the movements, and so are seeking out the spokespeople”.
Amnesty International also reports that those unfortunate to become detainees have been ill-treated when taken into police custody and that journalists and photographers covering demonstrations have also reported being the target of police violence. Cameras and equipment have been damaged by police to prevent the documenting of police violence.
Revenue from the sanctions since the new laws were enforced last July has now reached 18.3 million euros.
As the government itself has since recognised, demonstrators committed violence in less than one per cent of the rallies and protests.
In the meantime, the unelected bureaucrats of the European Union, of which Spain is a member state, have looked the other way as has the United Nations, both of whom promote as central to their existence the protection of human rights.
Instilling fear in the minds of the public has been a powerful tool of social control since the dawn of human civilization. Today, it is clear that the Western elite are using fear and terror as a means of ushering in totalitarian control. The mainstream media has been force-feeding the Western public a steady diet of war, fear and terror since the neocons “new Pearl Harbor event” in 2001.
After the latest terror attack in Belgium, the media is playing its usual role of amplifying the incident beyond any rational comprehension. The majority of the public are caught up in the vortex of emotive propaganda and sensationalist rhetoric. Images of terror; horror; fear; and panic dominate the news landscape. The main message is that you should be afraid.
The only solution to latest crisis (in the eyes of the elite) is for even greater spying powers and totalitarian control. Hillary Clinton, the political prostitute par excellence, called for more surveillance and an expansion of the police state in response to the attacks in Belgium. Both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump support a further erosion of civil liberties and have called for increasing surveillance of Muslims (Trump even advocated torturing terror suspects).
Yet not one political figure has called for prosecuting CIA and other US officials for war crimes, after years of the West openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria. Accountability is what is needed, not authoritarianism.
Every terror attack produces the same response by the elite: more surveillance, more state power, more war, more barbarism and more control. It’s frankly boring. You know what the puppets are going to say prior to them opening their mouths. It was the same response after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when David Cameron was pushing for greater surveillance powers in the UK and leading the charge for an insane ban on all encryption.
We know that NSA spying has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, and everything to do with controlling the domestic population. In the words of the high-level NSA whistleblower, William Binney: “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”
We know that Western intelligence agencies and their regional allies were instrumental in supporting the rise of ISIS (and other terror groups), by funding and arming these factions in a failed attempt to topple al-Assad. In the words of the former US military intelligence chief, Michael T. Flynn, the Obama administration took the “willful decision” to support the rise of these radical forces.
The criminal Western elite have no intention of winning the ‘war on terror,’ as the ‘war on terror’ was always designed to be perennial. The elite create the terror groups because without the faux ‘war on terror,’ the surveillance state loses the entire pretext on which it was built.
For any totalitarian elite, it is essential that “a state of war should exist,” as Orwell wrote in 1984:
“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist… The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable situation of survival” (2008 edition: p.200 & p.201).
As the elite create a perpetual state of war, chaos, fear and terror, the people of the West increasingly allow more power to be concentrated in the hands of the ‘superclass.’ If the Western public continues to be duped into believing that this phony ‘war on terror’ is real, the elite will use this as a pretext to completely destroy civil liberties and any semblance of freedom in the West.
Beholden to special interests; complicit in US war crimes across the globe; held top secret information on an unsecured home server; incessantly lies (like most politicians); and is married to a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault: the fact that Hillary Clinton is even remotely capable of becoming President of the US is symptomatic of how corrupt and screwed up the US political system actually is.
Puppet on a String
Clinton is the walking, talking definition of a political prostitute, completely controlled by special interests, Israel and the shadow establishment. Since the beginning of 2013, Clinton has received at least $21.7 million for 92 speeches she has given to private organizations and groups. This includes $225,000 from Morgan Stanley; $225,000 from Deutsche Bank; $225,000 from Bank of America; and $675,000 from the Goldman Sachs Group (for three separate speeches). George Soros, the investor, billionaire and regime change extraordinaire, has also put millions into Clinton’s campaign.
Hillary is controlled by the parallel US government, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 2009, she revealed her relationship with the CFR when she addressed the council at their newly opened outpost in Washington D.C.:
“I have been often to the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
A look at the corporate membership of the council reveals the level of power vested in such a small amount of hands, with approximately 200 of the most influential corporate players belonging to the group, including: Exxon Mobil Corporation; Goldman Sachs Group; JPMorgan Chase; BP plc; Barclays; IBM; Google Inc; Facebook; Lockheed Martin; Raytheon; Pfizer; Merck & Co; Deutsche Bank AG; Shell Oil Company; and Soros Fund Management.
War Criminal in Chief
Hillary is complicit in numerous crimes and atrocities perpetuated by the US when she was Secretary of State from January, 2009 to February, 2013. One of the most notable examples of this was the belligerent war in Libya in 2011. Clinton played a pivotal role in the NATO intervention which led to the toppling of the Libyan leader, Muammar al- Qaddafi, the destabilization of the country and the exacerbation of “humanitarian suffering.”
As Alan J. Kuperman, an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, wrote in his 2013 policy brief for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, titled:Lessons from Libya: How not to Intervene:
“NATO’s action magnified the conflict’s duration about sixfold, and its death toll at least seven-fold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If Libya was a ‘model intervention,’ then it was a model of failure.”
NATO has been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes in Libya, but as we know, there is no accountability for Western imperialism. Many have accused NATO of deliberately bombing civilian targets, including Libya’s water infrastructure. To Hillary (the war hawk) Clinton however, the intervention in Libya was a triumph. She famously remarked that “we came, we saw, he died” (before demonically laughing).
Arming Al-Qaeda
Clinton was also the Secretary of State during the 2012 Benghazi attack, when militants attacked a US compound in Benghazi, Libya, and a CIA facility nearby, killing four US personnel, including US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The failure to protect the compound has been widely written about, but the real story is what the compound was actually involved in. Numerous journalists – including Seymour Hersh – have reported that the compound was a key outpost for a covert operation that involved shipping weapons from Libya to the Syrian rebels who were fighting against Bashar al-Assad. Many reports have accused the US and their allies of covertly sending heavy weapons from the North African country to Syria.
A formerly classified document released by Judicial Watch from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reveals that the White House was at least aware of arms shipments from Libya to Syria, although the document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons (parts of the document are redacted however):
“Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles… The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm]” (DIA Doc).
Clinton was a strong supporter of the ludicrous and nefarious strategy of arming the Syrian rebels, even though US military intelligence was reporting in August 2012 that: “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [(al-Qaeda in Iraq)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” In 2015, Clinton also called for the creation of a no-fly zone in Syria, which as we saw in Libya, would result in the US bombing the Syrian army in a bid to oust al-Assad.
It’s impossible to document Hillary’s crimes without briefly discussing the allegations made against her husband, Bill Clinton. It’s highly ironic that Hillary’s platform for President is largely based on her (supposed) support for women’s rights, yet her husband has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault – Capitol Hill Blue documented some of these allegations. In 1998, Bill even paid Paula Jones $850,000 in an out-of-court settlement to drop a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill of raping her in 1978, also accused Hillary of threatening her if she spoke out.
It’s hard to think of any political figure that has been plagued by so many scandals in recent years. If Hillary is installed as President by the shadow elite, it will not just be catastrophic for the US, but for the entire globe as well.
Over 100 girls from a province in the Central African Republic claim they were sexually abused by UN peacekeepers, the AIDS-Free World’s campaign Code Blue reported. Co-founder of Code Blue Paula Donovan told Radio Sputnik that the reports are just the tip of the iceberg.
According to Donovan, the United Nations has been deliberately concealing the information about sex crimes committed by peacekeepers for the sake of its reputation, leaving ‘thousands’ of victims without hope.
“The United Nations by being so slow and so secretive and so careful about their reputation, they’re actually culpable in these crimes,” she argued.
Donovan said that documents in the recent case were leaked to her organization by an insider, and that the data they received included correspondence and notes from meetings that imply that the victims were interviewed two weeks before the information was released and that the UN was notified but — for unknown reasons — never informed the civilian population or the governments involved.
“Despite the fact that the Secretary General is saying that he is going to be more transparent, that just doesn’t ring true when he holds back this information and his staff holds back this information for such a long time,” Donovan said.
She accused the UN of creating a culture of impunity where the perpetrators never come to justice and are being released back to the community like there was no crime.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said earlier that the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “shocked to the core” over the allegations.
“Why in the world would Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon respond to these latest allegations with ‘shock’?” Donovan wondered. “It doesn’t shock any of us who’s been following these stories for the past ten years.”
She asserted that accusations by girls from the Central African Republic, which include such horrible abuses as forced bestiality, are the tip of the iceberg. In fact, UN peacekeepers commit similar crimes in other countries like Liberia or Democratic Republic of Congo, and there are not even hundreds but “thousands” of women and girls who say that “their only interaction with the United Nations has been transactional sex or forced sex by peacekeepers”.
There’s documented evidence of that happening over the past two decades, Donovan claims, and expert teams sent by the Secretary General to assess the situation informed superiors about ‘low morale’ in peacekeeping missions, but the issue was silenced and nothing was done to help the victims and persecute the criminals.
“We’re reading about the Central African Republic because the media… has been shining a spotlight on that one country, and this is indicative of what we would here from other peacekeeping countries if the attention were turned in that direction,” Donavan said.
Dujarric said last week that a UN team was sent to gather data regarding recently reported allegations of sexual assault and exploitation by UN and non-UN forces as well as civilians in Kemo prefecture in past two years.
KHARTOUM — The sanctions imposed on Khartoum by Washington hinder the development of cooperation between Russia and Sudan, Russian Ambassador to the African country Mirgayas Shirinskiy said Friday.
In 1997, Washington imposed economic, trade and financial sanctions against Khartoum on the ground of supporting terrorism, destabilizing neighboring states and violating human rights. The sanctions regime was extended in 2007, because of the violence in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
“The sanctions imposed on Sudan by the United States are significant hindrance [for the development of relations],” Shirinskiy told RIA Novosti, answering a question about the factors impeding the development of bilateral ties.
He added that the United States had imposed restrictions on deliveries of certain military equipment to Sudan, as well as on cooperation with Sudanese banking system that complicated business relations with country’s international partners.
In 2016, Moscow and Khartoum marked the 60th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations. Russia and Sudan have maintained a strong economic and political partnership for years. In 2014, the parties agreed to promote cooperation in a wide range of areas, including health care, mineral prospecting and the financial sector.
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
