Sovereignty, Sedition and Russia’s Undesirable NGOs
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 31.05.2015
On May 23, 2015 Russian President Vlaldimir Putin signed into law a new bill from the Duma that now gives prosecutors power to declare foreign and international organizations “undesirable” in Russia and shut them down. Predictably US State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, said the United States is “deeply troubled” by the new law, calling it “a further example of the Russian government’s growing crackdown on independent voices and intentional steps to isolate the Russian people from the world.”
Under the new law Russian authorities can ban foreign NGOs and prosecute their employees, who risk up to six years in prison or being barred from the country. The EU joined the US State Department in calling the law a “”worrying step in a series of restrictions on civil society, independent media and political opposition.” The George Soros-funded NGO, Human Rights Watch, condemned the law as did Amnesty International.
As with many things in today’s world of political doublespeak, the background to the new law is worth understanding. Far from a giant goose-step in the direction of turning Russia into a fascist state, the new law could help protect the sovereignty of the nation at a time it is in a de facto state of war with, above all, the United States and with various NATO spokesmen who try to curry favor with Washington, such as Jens Stoltenberg, its new Russophobic civilian head.
Russia has been targeted by political NGO’s operating on instructions from the US State Department and US intelligence since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990’s. The NGOs have financed and trained hand-picked opposition figures such as Alexei Navalny, member of a group called Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Navalny received money from the Washington NGO National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an acknowledged front for CIA political dirty tricks in their “weaponization of human rights and democracy” project.
Prior to the new NGO law, Russia had a far softer law—actually based on an existing US law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—that requires foreign-financed Russian NGOs to merely register as agents of a foreign country. Called the Russian Foreign Agent Law, it went into effect in November 2012, after US NGOs had been caught organizing numerous anti-Putin protests. That law requires non-profit organizations that receive foreign donations and serve as the instrument of a foreign power to register as foreign agents. The law was used to audit some 55 foreign-tied Russian NGOs, but to date has had little effect on the operations of those NGOs such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.
The NED
The case of NED is illustrative. The NED is a huge global operation that, as its creator, Allen Weinstein, who drafted the legislation establishing NED, said in an interview in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” In fact NED was initially the brainchild of Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, Bill Casey, as part of a major “privatization” of the CIA. NED’s budget comes from the US Congress and other State Department-friendly NGOs like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
The NED has sub-units: National Republican Institute, which is headed by Senator John McCain, the man who played a key role in the 2014 USA coup d’etat in Ukraine. The National Democratic Institute, tied to USA Democratic Party and chaired now by Clinton Secretary of State and Serbian bombing advocate, Madeline Albright. The NED Board of Directors includes the kernel of the Bush-Cheney neo-conservative warhawks like Elliott Abrams; Francis Fukuyama; Zalmay Khalilzad, former Iraq and Afghan US ambassador, and architect of Afghan war; Robert Zoellick, Bush family insider and ex-World Bank President.
In other words, this “democracy-promoting” US NGO is part of a nefarious Washington global agenda, using weaponized so-called Human Rights and Democracy NGOs to get rid of regimes who refuse to click their heels to commands of Wall Street or Washington. NED has been at the heart of every Color Revolution of Washington since their success toppling Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. Their coups installed pro-NATO presidents in Ukraine and Georgia in 2003-4, attempted to destabilize Iran in 2009, ran the Arab Spring operations to redraw the political map of the Middle East after 2011, and more recently HongKong’s “Umbrella Revolution” last year to embarrass China. The list goes on.
NED in Russia today
Inside Russia, despite the foreign agents law, the well-financed NED continues to operate. Since 2012 NED doesn’t disclose names of organizations in Russia they finance, something they did previously. They only name the sector and rarely activities that they financing. Moreover, there is no Annual report for 2014, a critical year after the CIA coup in Ukraine when Washington escalated dirty tricks against Moscow and de facto declared a state of war against the Russian Federation by imposing financial sanctions designed to cripple Russia’s economy. In every US Color Revolution to date, the USA institutions, Wall Street banks and hedge funds always try to create economic chaos and use that to stir political unrest, as in Brazil today against BRICS leader President Dilma Rousseff.
What the NED is spending millions of American taxpayer dollars for in Russia is highly revealing. In their online abridged report for 2014 NED reveals that among numerous projects in Russia they spent $530,067 under a category, Transparency in Russia: “To raise awareness of corruption.” Are they working with Russian prosecutors or police? How do they find the corruption they raise awareness of? That naturally also has a side benefit of giving Washington intimate details of corruption, real or imagined, that can be later used by its trained activist NGOs such as Navalny groups. An American NGO financed by US Congress, tied to the CIA and Victoria Nuland’s State Department decides which Russian companies are “corrupt”? Please…
Another category where the Washington-financed NED spends considerable sums in Russia today is labeled Democratic Ideas and Values: $400,000 for something called “Meeting Point of Human Rights and History–To raise awareness of the use and misuse of historical memory, and to stimulate public discussion of pressing social and political issues.” That sounds an awful lot like recent attempts by the US State Department to deny the significant, in fact decisive, role of the Soviet Union in defeating the Third Reich. We should ask who decides what are “pressing social and political issues,” the NED? CIA? Victoria Nuland’s neo-cons in the State Department?
Shoe on other foot
Let’s imagine the shoe on the other foot. Vladimir Putin and the Russian FSB foreign intelligence service decide to set up something they call a “National Enterprise to Foster American Democracy” (NEFAD). This Russian NEFAD finances to the tune of millions of dollars the training of American black activist youth in techniques of swarming, twitter riots, anti-police brutality demos, how to make Molotov cocktails, use of social media to put the police in a bad light. Their aim is to put spotlight on human rights abuses of US Government, FBI, police, government, institutions of public order. They seize on an obscure ambiguous incident in Baltimore Maryland or Chicago or New York and send Youtube videos around the world, twitter messages about the alleged police brutality. It doesn’t matter if the police acted right or wrong. Thousands respond, and march against the police, riots break out, people are killed.
Dear readers, do you imagine that the US Government would permit a Russian NGO to intervene in the sovereign internal affairs of the United States of America? Do you think the FBI would hesitate one second to arrest all NEFAD persons and shut down their operations? This is just what the US Congress-financed, CIA-backed, National Endowment for Democracy is doing in Russia. They have no business at all being anywhere in Russia, a sovereign nation, nor for that matter in any foreign country. They exist to stir trouble. The Russian government should politely show them the door, as truly undesirable.
In October, 2001, days after the shock of the attacks on the World Trade towers and Pentagon, the Bush Administration passed a bill that essentially tears up the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution, one of the finest constitutions in history. The USA Patriot Act as it was cynically named by its sponsors, permits the US Government among other things to conduct “surveillance of suspected terrorists, those suspected of engaging in computer fraud or abuse (sic!), and agents of a foreign power who are engaged in clandestine activities.” Another provision of this Patriot Act allows the FBI to make an order “requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”
There was barely a peep of outrage over this de facto USA police state law, a law which is now up for renewal in Congress. The fact that the NED stopped showing who they give money to in Russia proves they have something to hide. NED is the heart of the “Weaponization of Human Rights” operations by CIA and US State Department to do regime change in the world, so they can get rid of “uncooperative” regimes. As I stated in a recent Russian interview on the NED, shortly before this new law was enacted, I am astonished that Russia has not made such a law long ago when it was clear those US NGOs were up to no good. The NED is indeed an “undesirable” NGO, as are Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Open Society Foundations and the entire gaggle of US-government-fostered human rights NGOs.
Punishing Poland for US Crimes
By Nat Parry · Essential Opinion · May 19, 2015
It is one of the great ironies of the U.S.-led war on terror and post-Cold War transatlantic relations that democratic accountability and human rights protections at times seem stronger in the former Soviet bloc than they do in the United States. This lesson was driven home again last week when Poland paid a quarter of a million dollars to two terror suspects tortured by the CIA in a secret prison on Polish territory between 2002 and 2003.
Imposed by the European Court of Human Rights, the penalty issued against Poland prompted outrage among many Poles who felt they were being unfairly punished for American wrongdoing. “We might have to pay compensation even though our personnel did nothing wrong,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s former foreign minister. Sikorski noted that Poland is the only country that has sought to hold accountable its own senior officials whose decisions allowed the CIA to commit human rights violations on its territory.
This lack of accountability also goes for the United States, which has failed to investigate or prosecute any of the senior officials who authorized the human rights violations at secret CIA prisons in Poland or anywhere else.
Of the 119 known detainees held in CIA black sites between 2001 and 2006, at least 39 were subjected to torture by CIA personnel, according to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture released last December. The two individuals tortured in Poland, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were eventually sent to Guantanamo Bay, where they have remained since 2006.
While al-Nashiri is currently on trial for allegedly orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, Abu Zubaydah is considered one of Guantanamo’s “forever prisoners,” with no charges or trial foreseen. Not even a preliminary ruling has been made on his case in nearly seven years. In a May 12, 2015 article, ProPublica noted that his case has been stalled “for 2,477 days and counting.”
As one of his lawyers, Helen Duffy, wrote in the Guardian last December following the long-delayed release of the Senate report’s executive summary, “Abu Zubaydah might now be described as exhibit A” in the CIA’s rendition and torture regime.
“He has the regrettable distinction of being the first victim of the CIA detention programme for whom, as the report makes clear, many of the torture (or ‘enhanced interrogation’) techniques were developed, and the only prisoner known to have been subject to all of them,” Duffy wrote.
The Senate report contains about 1,000 references to Abu Zubaydah specifically, and confirms the ECHR’s findings regarding the interrogation techniques that he endured.
Among these were “wallings” (being slammed repeatedly against a wall), sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours (usually nude and in stress positions), and waterboarding. The waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, to which he was subjected 83 times in one month alone, was authorized at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
He was also subjected to extreme confinement.
“Over the course of the entire 20 day ‘aggressive phase of interrogation,’ Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, a depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet,” according to the Senate report. “The CIA interrogators told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped confinement box.”
Duffy notes that beyond Abu Zubaydah’s torture, the Senate report revealed how much misinformation was generated to justify his indefinite detention. Several of the CIA’s claims, in some cases reiterated long after they were known to be false, were repudiated point by point in the report.
For example, despite repeated assertions that Abu Zubaydah was “the third or fourth man in al-Qaida,” the report noted that the “CIA later concluded that Abu Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaida.” It also refuted the government’s claims regarding his involvement in 9/11, that the interrogating team was “certain he was withholding information” and claims that his torture led to valuable actionable intelligence.
The case of Abu Zubaydah also led to the only prosecution to date in the United States associated with the CIA’s torture program – although not for anyone who was involved with his ill-treatment, but for the CIA whistleblower who first exposed it.
Selective Prosecution
In a 2007 interview with ABC News, former CIA officer John Kiriakou described the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah and later allegedly provided to a journalist the name of a covert officer with the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center who worked on the operation to capture and interrogate Abu Zubaydah. For this offense, Kiriakou was charged under the 1917 Espionage Act and accepted a plea bargain for which he spent two years in prison.
The prosecution of Kiriakou was criticized at the time by some segments of the international community. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for example, in a resolution adopted in 2012 “condemned the prosecution that U.S. authorities have initiated against former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who is accused of providing journalists details regarding the capture of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda suspect who is said to have been tortured in a secret CIA prison in Poland and is one of two individuals granted ‘victim status’ by prosecutors in Warsaw.”
Former U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) said on the House floor on Nov. 17, 2012 that the government’s targeting of Kirakou represented a “selective prosecution.” He asked President Barack Obama to pardon Kiriakou and called the 15-year CIA veteran “an American hero.”
With Kiriakou out of prison after serving his term but the CIA’s torture victims still languishing in Gitmo with no end in sight, Poland has faced not only the political fallout for these policies but also the practical challenges of complying with the ECHR’s rulings considering the logistics of compensating individuals who are incarcerated – one a Palestinian and one a Saudi.
Nevertheless, “Poland is applying the ECHR’s decisions,” foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski said. “In the case of one person, the money was paid into a bank account indicated by his lawyers, in the case of the other, hit by international sanctions, we requested the creation of a judicial deposit,” he added.
In accordance with the ECHR ruling, Poland has also asked the United States to rule out the death penalty for the two men in line with an EU-wide ban on capital punishment, Wojciechowski told AFP.
Plausible Deniability
It irks many in Poland that their country is facing legal repercussions for the secret rendition and detention program which the CIA operated under then-President George W. Bush in several countries across the world after the 9/11 attacks. In Poland, the notion that the former Communist country would tolerate a secret CIA prison in which torture was being used was for years derided by the country’s politicians, journalists and the public as a crackpot conspiracy theory. Polish officials consistently denied the existence of any such prison.
But a string of revelations and political statements by Polish leaders acknowledged for the first time that the United States did indeed run a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects in 2002 and 2003 in a remote region of the country. In December 2014, Poland’s former President Aleksander Kwaśniewski officially admitted that a secret CIA prison had existed at an airbase where terror suspects were brought for interrogation, but he insisted that Warsaw had no knowledge of abuse happening at the site.
It appears now though that the denials of knowledge regarding torture may have been a case of willful ignorance or plausible deniability enforced by millions of dollars in cash payoffs. The Senate torture report revealed that despite initial threats by Poland to halt the transfer of terror suspects to the black site 11 years ago, the government became more “flexible” after the CIA started giving it large amounts of money. Reportedly, the CIA paid Polish officials as much as $50 million in cash to look the other way.
But according to Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s former foreign minister and now marshal of the lower house of the Parliament, the prison was set up out of friendship with the United States. He now concedes however that the covert relationship has proved detrimental to Poland.
“We have been embarrassed by it, but even so we do not apologize for having the closest possible security and intelligence relationship with the United States,” he said. “We might have to pay compensation even though our personnel did nothing wrong. You can imagine how Polish people feel about it.”
“This left bad feelings on our side,” said Tadeusz Chabiera, founder of the Euro-Atlantic Association think tank in Warsaw. “We are a small country that was badly treated by a great power.”
The regrets and feelings of betrayal being expressed in Poland follow a long-established pattern that goes back at least a decade. Signs of this frustration first emerged in 2004 during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, to which Poland committed 2,400 troops.
At the height of the Iraqi insurgency, David Ost reported in The Nation magazine on Sept. 16, 2004, “George W. Bush has managed to do what forty-five years of Communist rule could not: puncture the image of essential American goodness that has always been the United States’ key selling point.”
America’s Eroding Image
In Poland, as in many countries around the world, much of that positive image was restored following the election in 2008 of Barack Obama and the promise of change that he seemed to represent. But as the Pew Research Center reported in 2013, “pro-America sentiment is slipping.”
“The decline is in no way comparable to the collapse of U.S. standing in the first decade of this century,” according to Pew, which noted that at the time of the 2013 global survey, more than six-in-ten in Poland, France, Italy, and Spain had a favorable opinion of the U.S. “But the ‘Obama bounce’ in the global stature of the United States experienced in 2009 is clearly a thing of the past.”
It remains to be seen whether the recent developments on CIA torture will play any significant role in further eroding the image of the United States, but the incongruity of a small country like Poland bearing the brunt of liability for these illegal policies while no one in the United States answers for them should not be lost on any of the U.S.’s other allies.
In some of the countries that cooperated with the U.S. rendition program, the wheels of justice are still spinning, albeit slowly.
A criminal investigation is ongoing in Lithuania, where prosecutors are focusing on a possible illegal border crossing involving CIA prisoner Mustafa al-Hawsawi who was allegedly tortured at a Lithunian black site code-named Violet.
Meanwhile, calls are growing for authorities to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the existence of a CIA black site in Romania, with former Romanian President Ion Iliescu revealing last month that he had approved CIA requests to set up at least one secret prison where prisoners were subject to torture. Iliescu said he deeply regrets that decision.
Calls also continue for the United States to launch credible investigations into its own role, and to offer reparations to the victims of the rendition and torture program.
Coincidentally, the ECHR’s penalty against Poland was imposed the same week that the U.S. was urged by the United Nations to financially compensate victims of the U.S. torture regime and to prosecute the perpetrators of this abuse.
According to a report by the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, issued on May 15, the U.S. should “ensure that all victims of torture and ill-treatment – whether still in U.S. custody or not – obtain redress and have an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation and as full rehabilitation as possible, including medical and psychological assistance.”
Further, the U.S. should “ensure proper and transparent investigation and prosecution of individuals responsible for all allegations of torture and ill treatment, including those documented in the unclassified Senate summary on CIA activities published in 2014 and provide redress to victims.”
With a September deadline to respond to the UN’s recommendations, the Obama administration will have to make a stated commitment to the world by deciding which of the recommendations will be accepted, and which will be rejected.
When it comes to torture prosecutions and compensation, it is safe to say that the world will be watching.
Austria Demands Info on German-US Spying on Officials, Companies
Sputnik – 05.05.2015
Austria filed a formal complaint over suspicions that German and American intelligence agencies have spied on its authorities and firms, the Austrian interior minister said on Tuesday.
“Austria demands clarification,” Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told Reuters, following German media reports about such activities. She added that Austria’s security authorities were in contact with their German counterparts.
“Today we have filed a legal complaint with the prosecutor’s office,” she said, “against an unknown entity due to secret intelligence services to Austria’s disadvantage.”
German media reports said the BND, Germany’s intelligence agency, used its Bad Aibling listening post in Bavaria to spy on the French presidential palace, French foreign ministry and European Commission.
The snooping was done at the behest of US spy agency National Security Agency (NSA), which also asked the BND to monitor European firms to check if they were breaking trade embargos, according to reports.
Mikl-Leitner said that while there is not yet concrete evidence, “it’s not far-fetched to suspect that Austria was also spied on.”
She added that Austria will try to resolve the situation through its security, diplomatic and judicial bodies.
The NSA is believed to have passed a list of some 800,000 IP addresses, phone numbers and email addresses to the BND for monitoring, some of which belonged to European politicians and companies.
Citing an unnamed source from the German parliamentary committee on the US spying agency, German newspaper Bild said Berlin chose to remain silent and close its eyes to the information in order to avoid “endangering cooperation” with Washington and the NSA.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has denied reports that he was aware of the spying since at least 2008.
During a press briefing Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin is engaged in consultations with Washington on the NSA’s surveillance practices.
“I think what’s important here is that friends do not spy on each other. The answer is that it should not be so,” Merkel said.
She continued: “We are at the disposal of respective parliamentary bodies. The chancellor’s office is ready to provide all necessary information. This process is already under way. We are also consulting the United States.”
Secret documents leaked in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that the US spy agency monitored Merkel’s personal cell phone too.
Read more:
Airbus to Launch Criminal Complaint Against Germany in Spy Scandal
Drones and Apologies
By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | April 28, 2015
The United States government seems extremely proud of its ability to kill people without endangering the lives of the killers. Today they can sit in a comfortable office and, videogame-like, assassinate people thousands of miles away, without the risk of being shot down. In the past, pilots would at least see the explosion, and possibly see burned victims running from the scene, but such unpleasantness is no longer a necessary part of the mass murder called war.
At least 5,000 people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in the last ten years or so. Estimates of the number of ‘terrorists’ (whatever that means) who have been killed range from a few hundred to a few thousand. The rest are what is commonly known as ‘collateral damage’. Such a pleasant, innocuous term! Objects get damaged in a variety of ways; one might drop a dish when washing it, or perhaps dent their car when getting into a tight parking spot. Collateral damage, to be sure, but really nothing more than an inconvenience.
In U.S. parlance, ‘collateral damage’ means innocent people being killed when the U.S. wanted to kill some intended victim; the others, the ‘collateral damage’, were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, U.S. government officials claim, every effort is made to reduce such ‘damage’. This is probably not all that comforting to the loved ones of innocent people who were merely trying to go to work, school or the store, and who were blown to bits as the U.S. targeted some ‘terrorist’.
As long as we’re discussing the elusive concept of terrorism, let’s try to determine what it means. One definition that is occasionally bandied about is anyone who threatens the national security of the United States. So, someone in Pakistan who, perhaps, has been the victim of U.S. oppression, and has very limited resources to cause any damage whatsoever, is targeted, possibly by some CIA (Central Intelligence Agency; now if one wants to discuss international terrorism, that would be a good place to start) informant. So, once identified and placed on President Barack Obama’s kill list, the drone strike is ready. The victim may be assassinated, and if others happen to die also, well, what’s a little collateral damage among friends?
Mr. Obama broke precedent on April 23, when he admitted that two hostages, Dr. Warren Weinstein and Mr. Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in a drone strike, and issued an apology. Said Mr. Obama: “I take full responsibility for our counter-terrorism operations. In the fog of war… mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur… I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the US government, I offer our deepest apologies to the families.”
Now, Dr. Weinstein was from the U.S., and Mr. Lo Porto from Italy. Mr. Obama ‘profoundly’ regrets their deaths. Their deaths were the result of a ‘deadly mistake’, which can, he says, occur in the ‘fog of war’.
Let us take just a moment to look at some components of the president’s statement. What war, one wants to know, is being waged? An ill-defined ‘war on terror’ does not answer the question. Fighting so-called terror with genuine terror does not constitute a war; it constitutes terrorism.
More importantly, why has Mr. Obama been mainly silent when at least hundreds, and probably thousands of innocent men, women and children have been killed by drone strikes? Does he not ‘profoundly regret’ those horrific deaths, and the abject suffering their deaths inflicted on their loved ones?
Mr. Obama wasted no time once he became president to start killing people. In 2009, in what is thought to be his first authorized drone strike in Yemen, 14 women and 21 children were killed. Of these thirty-five people, one was suspected of having some connection to al-Qaeda. Where were the sympathetic comments of U.S. spokespeople regarding the other thirty-four? Or were they, perhaps, not considered, because they were probably Muslim, and certainly Yemeni, and therefore not of the same intrinsic value as an Italian citizen, and certainly not on a par with a citizen of that most superior society, the U.S.
The U.S. deems as ‘terrorist’ any individual or group that doesn’t toe its racist, imperial line. And it assigns that designation somewhat arbitrarily. In March, the Obama administration said that Venezuela represented an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. This occurred six days after Venezuela put the names of former U.S. president George Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, on a list of U.S. citizens ineligible to visit Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro said that “We will prohibit visas for individuals who want to come to Venezuela who have violated human rights….” What ‘unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States’ this move represented was never clarified.
This complex web of circumstances constitutes a significant part of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. can designate any individual, group or country a terrorist, simply because it wishes to do so. It assigns itself the roles of judge, jury and, with drone strikes, executioner. Those who get in the way are mourned if they are from the West, but dismissed as collateral damage if from the East. And then the U.S. accuses other nations of violating international law, as if it is somehow exempt from such trivialities.
The U.S. uses drones to perpetrate unspeakable terror on Third World countries, all in the sacred name of protecting U.S. interests. That those interests always have more to do with corporate profits than with human rights is a given, proven by history and reinforced by all credible documentation today. The myth of the U.S. as a beacon of peace and liberty, supporting the basic human dignity of the downtrodden, is a fairy tale believed in few places beyond U.S. borders. And innocent people around the world continue to pay with their lives for the violence that is so much a part of U.S. imperialism.
Weaponizing Information
By Joyce Nelson | CounterPunch | April 23, 2015
In mid-April, hundreds of U.S. paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in western Ukraine to provide training for government troops. The UK had already started its troop-training mission there, sending 75 troops to Kiev in March. [1] On April 14, the Canadian government announced that Canada will send 200 soldiers to Kiev, contributing to a military build-up on Russia’s doorstep while a fragile truce is in place in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian Embassy in Ottawa called the decision “counterproductive and deplorable,” stating that the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have “called for enhanced intra-Ukrainian political dialogue,” as agreed upon in the Minsk-2 accords in February, and that it would be “much more reasonable to concentrate on diplomacy…” [2]
That viewpoint is shared by many, especially in Europe where few are eager for a “hot” war in the region. Nor are most people enamoured of the fact that more billions are being spent on a new arms-race, while “austerity” is preached by the 1 Per Cent.
But in the Anglo-American corridors of power (also called the Atlantic Alliance), such views are seen to be the result of diabolical propaganda spread through the Internet by Russia’s “secret army.” On April 15, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Ed Royce (R-Calif.), held a hearing entitled “Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information,” with Royce claiming that Russian propaganda threatens “to destabilize NATO members, impacting our security commitments.” [3]
The Committee heard from three witnesses: Elizabeth Wahl, former anchor for the news agency Russia Today (RT) who gained her moment of fame by resigning on camera in March 2014; Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute (a right-wing UK think-tank); and Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think-tank. [4] The Foreign Affairs Committee website contains video clips of the first two witnesses – well worth watching if you enjoy Orwellian rhetoric passionately delivered.
The day before the hearing, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Royce wrote, “Vladimir Putin has a secret army. It’s an army of thousands of ‘trolls,’ TV anchors and others who work day and night spreading anti-American propaganda on the Internet, airwaves and newspapers throughout Russia and the world. Mr. Putin uses these misinformation warriors to destabilize his neighbors and control parts of Ukraine. This force may be more dangerous than any military, because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining U.S. security interests in Europe.” [5]
In her formal (printed) submission, Ms. Wahl referred to the Internet’s “population of paranoid skeptics” and wrote: “The paranoia extends to believing that Western media is not only complicit, but instrumental in ensuring Western dominance.”
Helle C. Dale warned of “a new kind of propaganda, aimed at sowing doubt about anything having to do with the U.S. and the West, and in a number of countries, unsophisticated audiences are eating it up.”
Peter Pomerantsev claimed that Russia’s goal is “to trash the information space with so much disinformation so that a conversation based on actual facts would become impossible.” He added, “Throughout Europe conspiracy theories are on the rise and in the US trust in the media has declined. The Kremlin may not always have initiated these phenomena, but it is fanning them… Democracies are singularly ill equipped to deal with this type of warfare. For all of its military might, NATO cannot fight an information war. The openness of democracies, the very quality that is meant to make them more competitive than authoritarian models, becomes a vulnerability.”
Chairman Royce called for “clarifying” the mission of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. federal agency whose networks include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). [6]
The BBG is apparently in disarray. According to Helle Dale’s submission, on March 4, 2015, Andrew Lack, the newly hired CEO of BBG’s International Broadcasting, left the position after only six weeks on the job. On April 7, the Director of Voice of America, David Ensor, announced that he was leaving.
Andrew Lack was formerly the president of NBC News. As Paul Craig Roberts has recently noted, Lack’s first official statement as CEO of the BBG “compared RT, Russia Today, the Russian-based news agency, with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization. The purpose of Andrew Lack’s absurd comparison is to strike fear at RT that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack’s message to RT is: ‘lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.’ The British already did this to Iran’s Press TV. In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts.” [7]
Ironically, however, it’s likely that one of the biggest threats (especially in Europe) to Anglo-American media credibility about Ukraine and other issues is coming from a very old-fashioned medium – a book.
Udo Ulfkotte’s bestseller Bought Journalists has been a sensation in Germany since its publication last autumn. The journalist and former editor of one of Germany’s largest newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, revealed that he was for years secretly on the payroll of the CIA and was spinning the news to favour U.S. interests. Moreover he alleges that some major media are nothing more than propaganda outlets for international think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and corporate high-finance. “We’re talking about puppets on a string,” he says, “journalists who write or say whatever their masters tell them to say or write. If you see how the mainstream media is reporting about the Ukraine conflict and if you know what’s really going on, you get the picture. The masters in the background are pushing for war with Russia and western journalists are putting on their helmets.” [8]
In another interview, Ulfkotte said: “The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say… it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe.” [9]
With the credibility of the corporate media tanking, Eric Zuesse recently wrote, “Since Germany is central to the Western Alliance – and especially to the American aristocracy’s control over the European Union, over the IMF, over the World Bank, and over NATO – such a turn away from the American Government [narrative] threatens the dominance of America’s aristocrats (who control our Government). A breakup of America’s [Atlantic] ‘Alliance’ might be in the offing, if Germans continue to turn away from being just America’s richest ‘banana republic’.” [10]
No wonder the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on April 15 had such urgent rhetoric, especially from Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute – a London-based international think-tank whose motto is “Prosperity Through Revitalizing Capitalism and Democracy” and whose stated mission is “promoting prosperity through individual liberty, free enterprise and entrepreneurship, character and values.”
At the end of March, Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson (named as a potential successor to David Cameron) helped launch the Legatum Institute’s “Vision of Capitalism” speakers’ series, whose rallying cry is “It’s time for friends of capitalism to fight back.” [11] The sponsor of the event was the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), whose membership comprises “more than 500 influential firms, including over 230 private equity and venture capital houses, as well as institutional investors, professional advisers, service providers and international associations.” It is not clear whether the BVCA is also sponsoring the Legatum Institute’s “Vision of Capitalism” series.
The Legatum Institute was founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler’s Legatum Ltd. – a private investment firm headquartered in Dubai. According to The Legatum Institute’s website, its executives and fellows write for an impressive number of major media outlets, including the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, New Republic, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the London Review of Books, the Atlantic, and the Financial Times.
Nonetheless, the Legatum Institute’s Peter Pomeranzev told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs that “Russia has launched an information war against the West – and we are losing.”
Chairperson Ed Royce noted during the hearing that if certain things are repeated over and over, a “conspiracy theory” takes on momentum and a life of its own.
Pomeranzev said the Kremlin is “pushing out more conspiracy” and he explained, “What is conspiracy – sort of a linguistic sabotage on the infrastructure of reason. I mean you can’t have a reality-based discussion when everything becomes conspiracy. In Russia, the whole discourse is conspiracy. Everything is conspiracy.” He added, “Our global order is based on reality-based politics. If that reality base is destroyed, then you can’t have international institutions, international dialogue.” Lying, he said, “makes a reality-based politics impossible” and he called it “a very insidious trend.”
Apparently, Pomeranzev has forgotten that important October 2004 article by Ron Suskind published in the New York Times Magazine during the second war in Iraq (which, like the first, was based on a widely disseminated lie). Suskind quoted one of George W. Bush’s aides (probably Karl Rove): “The aide said that guys like me [journalists, writers, historians] were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality… That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.” [12]
It’s a rather succinct description of Orwellian spin and secrecy in a media-saturated Empire, where discerning the truth becomes ever more difficult.
That is why people believe someone like Udo Ulfkotte, who is physically ill, says he has only a few years left to live, and told an interviewer, “I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there are always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too… We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war… I don’t want this anymore, I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom…” [13]
Recently, as Mike Whitney has pointed out in CounterPunch (March 10), Germany’s news magazine Der Spiegel dared to challenge the fabrications of NATO’s top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, for spreading “dangerous propaganda” that is misleading the public about Russian “troop advances” and making “flat-out inaccurate statements” about Russian aggression.
Whitney asks, “Why this sudden willingness to share the truth? It’s because they no longer support Washington’s policy, that’s why. No one in Europe wants the US to arm and train the Ukrainian army. No wants them to deploy 600 paratroopers to Kiev and increase U.S. logistical support. No one wants further escalation, because no wants a war with Russia. It’s that simple.” [14] Whitney argued that “the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow.”
So now we know the reason for the timing of the April 15 U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, “Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information.” Literally while U.S. paratroopers were en route to Kiev, the hawks in Washington (and London) knew it was time to crank up the rhetoric. The three witnesses were most eager to oblige.
Joyce Nelson is an award-winning Canadian freelance writer/researcher and the author of five books.
Notes
[1] “U.S. Military Instructors Deployed to Ukraine to Train Local Forces,” RT.com, April 17, 2015.
[2] Steven Chase, “Russian decries Ukraine training,” The Globe & Mail (April 16, 2015).
[3] http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/231982691
[4] http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-royce-announces-hearing-russia-s…
[5] Ed Royce, “Countering Putin’s Information Weapons of War,” The Wall Street Journal (April 14, 2015).
[6] http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/231982691
[7] http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/16/truth-is-our-country/print
[8] http://russia-insider.com/en/print/531
[9] http://washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/leading-german-journalist-admits-cia-bribed-l…
[10] Ibid.
[11] http://www.li.com/events/boris-johnson-launches-vision-fcapitalism-series
[12] Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” The New York Times Magazine (Oct. 17, 2004).
[13] http://washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/leading-german-journalist-admits-cia-bribed-l…
[14] http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/10/natio-lies-and-provocations/print
Egypt’s President Sisi meets with CIA chief in Cairo
Press TV – April 19, 2015
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has held talks with CIA Director John Brennan amid Cairo’s heavy-handed clampdown on opponents of the country’s military-backed government.
According to a statement released by the Egyptian government, Sisi and Brennan discussed regional issues, terrorism and “ways of enhancing bilateral relations” in their Sunday meeting in the Egyptian capital Cairo.
The two sides agreed to continue “consultation and coordination on issues of mutual interest,” the statement added.
The announced visit by the CIA chief to the North African country came less than two weeks after the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced plans to sell air-to-surface missiles worth of $57 million to Egypt.
Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Sisi, the then army commander.
Since Morsi’s ouster, Egypt has been the scene of massive anti-government protests, with continuous clashes between security forces and the supporters of the former president, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
The new rulers in Egypt have come under pressure from human rights groups over their harsh crackdown on Brotherhood members and supporters.
The Egyptian administration’s suppression has led to the deaths of more than 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.
However, Egypt’s former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and a few of his senior officials have been acquitted of all charges leveled against them over the killing of protesters in the country’s 2011 revolution.
US, Poland behind Kiev Maidan unrest: Polish MEP
Janusz Korwin-Mikke , European lawmaker and leader of Poland’s conservative party
Press TV – April 19, 2015
The violent pro-EU protests staged in Ukraine’s Maidan Square last year were organized by the CIA spy agency and Polish figures, a European lawmaker and leader of Poland’s conservative KORWiN party says.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke made the remarks in an interview with Polish media, the Russia-based Sputnik news agency reported on Saturday.
In mid-February 2014, dozens of people were killed by gunmen during street battles in the center of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Pro-EU protesters had staged sit-ins at the Maidan Square since November 2013 to protest against then President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an Association Agreement with Brussels in favor of closer ties with Russia.
Korwin-Mikke said that the snipers in Kiev had also been trained in Poland, adding the “terrorists shot dead 40 demonstrators and 20 police officers to provoke unrest and the truth about this is finally coming out.”
This file photo shows the Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine, which was destroyed by violence during protests in February 2014.
The Polish politician also pointed to the admission by US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland that Washington had spent billions of dollars to destabilize Ukraine.
“Victoria Nuland openly admitted that he Americans had spent $5 billion to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, and what we now have in Ukraine is an American aggression with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin bearing the brunt of it all,” said Korwin-Mikke.
Days after the deadly shootings in Kiev, Yanukovych was ousted on February 22, 2014, by Western-backed groups. The ouster triggered in its turn pro-Russia protests in the country’s southern and eastern regions.
In a bid to crush the pro-Russia protests, Kiev launched military operations in mid-April last year, causing deadly clashes in the country’s two mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.
The warring sides inked a ceasefire agreement in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in February. Since then, both sides have, on numerous occasions, accused each other of breaking the truce.
The fighting has taken a heavy toll on thousands of people. More than 6,100 people have died, while nearly 15,500 have been injured in the conflict, the United Nations says.
German court to hear evidence from Yemeni drone victim for first time
Reprieve | April 19, 2015
A court in Germany is set to take evidence from a Yemeni victim of the USA’s secret drone programme – in the wake of revelations that military bases on German soil play a key role in the strikes.
Faisal bin Ali Jaber, an environmental engineer from Sana’a who lost two relatives to a 2012 drone strike, has won the right to give evidence next month, as part of a constitutional claim filed in Germany.
The claim, filed in October last year by international human rights organisation Reprieve and its German partner, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), seeks measures by the German administration to stop the use of German territory for illegal actions by the U.S. in Yemen. They argue that the German government is acting in breach of the German constitution by allowing the U.S. to use its air base at Ramstein for illegal drone attacks abroad.
Mr Jaber lost his brother-in-law Salim – a preacher – and nephew Waleed – a local police officer – to a US drone strike on the village of Khashamir on 29 August 2012. Salim often spoke out against extremism, and had used a sermon just days before he was killed to urge his congregation to reject Al Qaeda.
The case represents the first time that a court in a country which provides support to the US drone programme will hear from one of its civilian victims. The U.S.’ campaign of drone strikes – carried out in secret by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces – has come in for widespread criticism due to a lack of transparency and accountability. Many legal experts have argued that it violates both domestic and international law, while humanitarians have warned of the large number of civilians killed in the strikes.
Kat Craig, Legal Director at Reprieve and Mr bin Ali Jaber’s lawyer: “This is a crucial step in efforts to gain accountability for the civilian victims of secret US drone strikes. It also highlights that the US is not alone in this campaign – support is quietly provided by allies including Germany and the UK. Faisal’s story demonstrates how the misguided drone programme is not simply unacceptable, but deeply counterproductive. Not only is it killing civilians; it has even killed the very people who should be our allies in fighting extremism. Let’s hope this marks the start of some long overdue scrutiny of a programme characterised by secrecy.”
Andreas Schüller, Mr bin Ali Jaber’s attorney at ECCHR, said: “Germany must now take effective measures to stop the US from using Ramsteinn airbase for combat drone missions.”
Family of ‘emaciated’ Guantanamo prisoner plead in court for help
Reprieve | April 15, 2015
The family of a hunger-striking Pakistani man detained in Guantanamo Bay has today filed an emergency application with the Islamabad High Court, demanding that the Pakistani government intervene immediately in his case.
Ahmad Rabbani has been on hunger strike for more than two years in protest at his detention without charge or trial in Guantanamo, where he has been held since 2004. An affidavit submitted to the court by human rights organization Reprieve, whose staff recently visited Mr Rabbani, describes the damaging effect on his health of his brutal treatment at the prison – including daily force-feedings and ‘forced cell extractions’ (FCEs).
Mr Rabbani has told his lawyers at Reprieve that his weight has dropped to approximately 40kg, and that he regularly vomits and experiences numbness in his limbs, dizziness and fainting. Mr Rabbani described how his thigh has wasted away to the width of his calf. His lawyers describe him as looking “emaciated” during their latest visit.
The urgent court application demands that the Pakistani government intervene immediately with the U.S. authorities to arrange for the release and repatriation of Mr Rabbani before he either dies or suffers permanent damage to his health. Filed today, the petition is likely to be heard tomorrow (Thurs) in the Court.
The court has previously heard how Mr Rabbani’s constitutional rights to legal defence, fair trial, and humane treatment have all been gravely abused by his detention without charge or trial by the United States – violations which, Mr Rabbani’s lawyers argue, oblige the Pakistani government to take up his case.
Mr Rabbani’s lawyers have also submitted to the court a copy of the US Senate’s recent report into CIA torture, which reveals that his 2002 arrest was a case of mistaken identity. The 2014 report also confirms that Mr Rabbani was initially detained for 540 days in secret CIA jails before his transfer to Guantanamo, and was subjected to a number of violent interrogation methods that have been condemned as torture.
Commenting, Mr Rabbani’s lawyer Alka Pradhan, US Counsel at Reprieve, said: “The US Senate report confirmed that Ahmed Rabbani was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time 13 years ago – and that he was horribly tortured in US secret prisons. But he remains in Guantanamo – and after years of abuse, he is now dangerously ill. Ahmad’s hunger strike is a last desperate cry for help from the Pakistani government. They must now intervene in his case and bring him home.”
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Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals.
Children are usually forced into literal slavery that includes forced labor, sexual exploitation or prostitution, drug smuggling, forced begging, organ harvesting, etc. Many terrorist groups and narco-traffickers even use them as child soldiers, forcing them into dangerous firefights with rival groups or even official security forces such as the police and/or military. Although estimates vary significantly, as the exact data is incomplete at best, expectedly, the world’s most populous countries have the highest number of child trafficking victims. And yet, it seems the United States is the most profitable market for such criminal activities. Back in 2018, Tim Swarens of USA Today calculated that adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the US alone. Worse yet, this is only based on available data. … continue
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