Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the celebrity who moonlights as my Congressional representative, has repeatedly claimed to speak for “ordinary people,” but she refuses listen to them, even if they are constituents.
In late November, shortly after the US-backed military coup that unseated the legitimate president of Bolivia, I together with my life companion requested a meeting with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, whose local offices are located just a short walk from our Jackson Heights apartment building. Working on behalf of a group of anti-imperialists opposing the fascist junta, we hoped to persuade her of the need to act quickly to thwart the coup and defend the lives and rights of the Bolivian people.
Although we never got past the reception desk, we were permitted to present a petition signed by leading academics and anti-imperialist organizers on behalf of the people of Bolivia. We provided all personal data and contact info requested by the office. We were promised that we would be contacted promptly to discuss scheduling a meeting.
We were not contacted. For weeks. After pressing the issue, always taking care to remain courteous and respectful of process, we were subjected to a galling and contemptuous bureaucratic runaround that sometimes felt like applying to – and being rejected by – an exclusive private school.
This three-month process involved repeated visits to her office, where our reception ranged from chilly to downright intimidating, endless emails and telephone calls, bureaucratic excuses and dissimulations, and eventually, after much persistence on our part, a half-hour vetting via conference call by a Washington staffer.
The result? As we say in Queens, bubkes.
By contrast, a group of imperialist sympathizers who had been promoting the coup for months were granted instant access. On November 16, four days after the military coup that destroyed Bolivian democracy, Ocasio-Cortez met with a group of pro-Áñez, pro-Camacho activists led by one Ana Carola Traverso. Traverso’s connections to the Bolivian coup plotters have been extensively documented online.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez symbolically embraced the coup by posing for a photo with this group as they brandished the tricolor Bolivian flag, which during that period had become a signal of support for the golpistas (as opposed to the Wiphala flag, which symbolized popular resistance to the takeover). She told them that she supports their “democratic grassroots movement” and offered them “direct lines of communication.”
In sum, a gang of coup supporters, not constituents, were granted instant access, a photo op and promises of ongoing support. Actual constituents, opposing the coup, were shown the door.
Our reception by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was radically different from that I received from her predecessor, Joe Crowley. When, in 2004, I requested a meeting on behalf of the Queens Antiwar Coalition, we were granted prompt and respectful access to the Congressman. We did not have high hopes of changing his vote on the Iraq war, but we felt it was important that he hear from his constituents.
So, apparently, did he. We were greeted warmly in his rather funky local office – a striking contrast with AOC’s soulless corporate-style digs, where underlings refer to her as “the Boss” – and were encouraged to speak our piece. Crowley never pretended to be an opponent of US imperialism, but he gave us a respectful hearing, stated his position, and engaged in what felt like meaningful discussion of the war. At a minimum, as Twitter’s bluecheck pundits would say, we felt “seen.”
AOC, by contrast, has no time for people who cannot help her to burnish her brand as she prepares to run for higher office. As a local staffer (who declined to introduce himself) proudly informed us: “She refuses 99 percent of meeting requests from constituents.”
Meanwhile, she happily clears her schedule for interviews about her makeup routine, canned videos in which she postures as a fearless progressive, and closed-door meetings with regime-change sympathizers.
But she will not make time for residents of her district. So much for “ordinary people.”
Just as Roger Stone’s sentencing was getting underway this afternoon, another story began drifting out into the media sphere – another potential spanner in the works just in time for part one of Julian Assange’s US extradition hearing which is due to commence this Monday.
According to a revelation aired during a recent scheduled case hearing on Wednesday by a member of Assange’s defence team, Edward Fitzgerald QC, Assange was informally offered some kind of pardon deal by a US representative during the first year of the Trump Administration. Fitzgerald was reading from a statement by Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, reportedly saying:
“Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”
This statement is referring to former US Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) who says he visited Assange as part of Rohrbacher’s own independent ‘fact finding mission’ at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, near the beginning of the Mueller Investigation.
Before we continue and unravel what has been said and by whom, there are three key aspects of this latest news to consider.
The first and most importantly – is the media spin aspect. Given that this is both a highly-charged partisan, as well as geopolitical case, and that we are just days away from the start of Assange’s historic extradition hearing, there are powerful forces, be they state, partisan or media – who will try and spin this and other ‘bombshells’ in a way which suits their political agenda. It also goes without saying that there are agents of influence within mainstream media organizations who are both willing and able to manipulate, twist, distort or fabricate any aspect of a story like this in order to further the interests of the two primary government stakeholders in this case, the United States and United Kingdom. This has already been demonstrated time and time again with the Assange story, most notably by The Guardian newspaper who completely fabricated at least one headline story by Luke Harding and Danny Collyns claiming that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The Guardian then followed this fake news story up with a sequel in which they used Harding’s Manafort story to help bolster another bogus claim that an ally of Nigel Farage was attempting to obtain emails from WikiLeaks. Bottom line: if there is any opportunity to advance a Trump-Russia or RussiaGate narrative, there are mainstream journalists and editors ready to publish or say anything, even if it’s a complete lie.
The second thing to consider is how this latest news will factor into Julian Assange’s extradition hearing next week.
And thirdly, whether or not the Dana Rohrbacher story will ultimately help, or hurt the real protagonist in this case, Julian Assange.
Most certainly, the mainstream media have distorted this story from the word go, mostly to advance anti-Trump and anti-Russian narratives. We’ll look at two reports, one from the Daily Beast, and the other from the UK’s Independent.
The Daily Beast story written by Nico Hines carries an over-the-top headline, “Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims”. Of course, this isn’t actually what the lawyer said. The headline doesn’t actually correspond with the claims made below in the article. Hine’s own article does not stipulate that Trump himself made such an offer to Assange. Hine then repeats the same lie in the sub-header, saying that Rohrbacher “had brought the message to London from Trump.” In addition to this, the headline erroneously asserts that Assange is also orchestrating a cover-up. No doubt the Daily Beast’s management and data analytics team knows that a large percentage of online readers, especially those seeing content via social media, only skim the headline of a post and do not read the body of the article (content engineers need to know this data because it is how they place and bill for advertising space). In addition to this, according to a statement made by former Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, the former Congressman made a proposition to Assange that if the WikiLeaks founder was prepared to give proof of who provided the DNC and related email leaks, Rohrbacher would do his best to lobby the President for a pardon. With his gratuitous headline, stamped with “Quid Pro Quo” in red lettering right below it, Hines was attempting to re-purpose the UkraineGate-Impeachment accusation of Trump’s abuse of power in asking the Ukrainian President Zelensky for an illicit ‘Quid Pro Quo’ favor, thus engaging in yet another under-the-table dodgy deal.
Above all, this story is being crafted to look as if Trump was in league with Assange to try and cover-up any Russian involvement in the DNC Leaks and the 2016 Election – leaving the reader to assume that there was Russian involvement. This story is complete spin and clickbait by the Daily Beast. In classic propaganda style, the author also uses this opportunity to reinforce the usual laundry list of unproven RussiaGate narrative talking points, stating a series of evidence-free assertions and falsehoods as if they were iron-clad proven facts (now standard operating procedure for most US mainstream outlets):
“Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.”
“WikiLeaks posted the stolen DNC emails after they were hacked by Russian operatives.”
This is followed by a cheap, ad hominem smear against Rohrbacher:
“Rohrabacher, who was known as Putin’s favorite congressman.”
Like The Guardian, formerly a respectable newspaper, the UK’s Independent has become a formidable online propaganda outlet. It’s headline takes the Daily Beast spin even further, adding ‘Russian election interference’ for good measure: “Trump offered to pardon Assange if he covered up Russian interference in US election, court told”. Of course, this is not what the court was told, but the truth doesn’t seem to be a priority for these mainstream outlets. It repeats most of the lies woven through the Daily Beast article, and then builds a partisan angle on top of the initial lie, making reference to the 2020 US election:
“… could have profound consequences for Mr Trump’s re-election effort if proven true.”
Note also the use of the cheap throwaway propaganda phrase, “if proven true” – which more often than not denotes a fake allegation, and is proof of deceptive intent, or a pre-existing agenda or bias by the author. A similar election smear here:
“It’s another indication that Trump’s assault on the rule of law isn’t new; it’s been ongoing throughout his term. And imagine just how much we don’t yet know.”
The propaganda housekeeping continues, advancing the official conspiracy theory that the DNC and Clinton emails were hacked, when there is still no proof to validate this claim, citing a likely partisan source, Obama CIA official Ned Price:
“A series of emails embarrassing for the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign were hacked before being published by WikiLeaks…”
More of the same, reinforcing unproven, untested accusations tabled by Mueller probe:
The Mueller investigation, published in April, found Russian GRU agents hacked Ms Clinton’s private server for the first time just hours after Mr Trump’s public request for Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing”.
(NOTE: DOJ indictments of ‘GRU hackers’ have shown no proof, FBI did not forensically inspect DNC servers, only showed redacted IT reports from the private firm Crowdsrike, and posited an unproven theory that Russian GRU agents ran online cut-outs like Guccifer 2.0)
Needless to say, when it comes to stories like this, most mainstream media outlets are not fit for purpose, and most likely co-opted by some partisan interests, or worse, by an intelligence agency. History is replete with examples of this.
The second consideration is: how will this latest revelation effect Julian Assange’s extradition hearing next week? If you can filter out all of the media and partisan spin, you can see that this new information was introduced by the defense for a reason which may have less to do with Trump and Russia, and more to do with substantiating a complaint made by the defense that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S. because Washington’s case against him is in fact politically motivated. In this case, as a serving member of Congressman, Rohrbacher’s meeting with Assange and solicitation of a deal automatically proves that there was direct US political involvement in advance of the Department of Justice’s 18 superceding indictments of Assange served this past summer. In addition to this, the defense has proof of a CIA-led operation which spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which included surveillance of his discussions with his attorneys. Taken together, these two pieces of evidence could be crucial in the defense’s effort to have the US extradition request overturned on the basis that the US effort is entirely politically motivated and therefore in violation the extradition treaty between the two countries.
WikiLeaks tweeted out today that this Rohrbacher story will come into play on Tuesday’s session of the hearing.
WikiLeaks also points out the issue of the timeline of events with this story – that the Rohrbacher meeting took place long after Assange had publicly stated that his source for the DNC leaks was not a sate actor.
In addition to this, former UK Ambassador and friend of Assange, Craig Murray, has also declared publicly ( and confidently) on numerous occasions that the source was not Russia, but from ‘Washington DC circles’. From Sputnik News:
In December 2016 Murray told Radio Sputnik that the DNC Leaks had “absolutely nothing to do with Russia”. He said that he discovered the source while attending a whistleblowing conference in the US and stressed that it came from “official circles in Washington DC”.
Lastly, there is the question of whether or not the Dana Rohrbacher story will help, or hurt the credibility of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
As I have stated a number of times previously, the key to the DOJ case against Assange lies in the language in which they have reframed Assange and WikiLeaks from being a journalist and a press outlet, and instead labeled him as a ‘cyber terrorist and Russian asset’, and a ‘hostile non-state foreign intelligence service’, respectively. This reframing will also allow the US to strip Assange and WikiLeaks of any first Amendment protections upon arrival in the US, as well as justify Special Administrative Measures, which places Assange essentially in the same category as an enemy combatant or terrorist. One way to make this reframing exercise more credible is by attacking the credibility of both Assange and WikiLeaks, to portray them as not acting like ‘conventional journalistic outlets,’ simply to demonstrate that Assange and WikiLeaks are cavalier or careless in keeping to their journalistic principles. This is where the claims made by Dana Rohrbacher might be used to undermine Julian Assange’s insistence that WikiLeaks protects their sources at all costs. The insinuation by Rohrbacher – which has now cascaded through the world’s media – is that Assange was willing to sell-out his principles by divulging to Washington who leaked the DNC emails in order to save his own skin in the form of a pardon from President Trump.
“Upon my return, I spoke briefly with Gen. Kelly. I told him that Julian Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon.”
In his statement posted on Feb. 20, 2020, Rohrbacher was careful not to state explicitly that Assange had told him “Yes” and agreed to give up his source in exchange for a Presidential pardon – it was only inferred in Rohrbacher’s above quote, “I told him that Julian Assange would provide information…” – but he does not specify what exactly that information would be: a source, contextual information, deductive information, ie. who it wasn’t, or some other forensic evidence which would rule out a Russian state actor. It’s hard to know at this point, but that didn’t stop the mainstream media from colonizing that vacuum of information with the usual bevy of speculation, spin and fake news which we demonstrated earlier in this article. But the general impression in all of the reporting and from the Congressman himself, is that Assange had told Rohrbacher he would indeed give up his source in exchange for a pardon. This does not square with many vehement statements made by Assange about maintaining the integrity of WikiLeaks’ sources.
Who would really expect Assange to have have suffered this ten-year long ordeal – only to suddenly trust an emissary of the United States government to keep his promise to make good on some informal, and highly uncertain promise of freedom?
It’s also worth noting here that this same narrative mirrors a story which has been circulating somewhat under the radar for months, about a former FOX News contributor named Ellen Ratner (late brother Michael Ratner had been a U.S. lawyer for WikiLeaks) who says she visited with Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the fall of 2016. Claims about her visit were then made by an alleged associate, another FOX News contributor and Dallas financial manager named Ed Butowsky – and Butowsky claims that Ratner told him that Assange said his source was the late Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was shot and killed a block from his apartment in Washington DC on July 10, 2016. This of course infers, by extension, that Rich was murdered because he was the leaker. The Ratner-Butowsky story has been mentioned by a few mainstream media outlets, but is more popular in alternative American conservative media. All of this is purely speculative, and as yet, without any evidence to validate the theory. However, Butowsky’s third-hand claims have triggered a chain a lawsuits led by a libel suit filed by the family of Seth Rich against various parties and media outlets who made the claim that Rich leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
The amount of media noise surrounding this issue can easily obfuscate some of the fundamental principles and themes which are governing the mainstream narrative of this story.
What’s important to note here is that just like Rohrbacher’s inference that Assange had agreed to provide information on the DNC leaks, Butowsky’s unfounded claim infers that Julian Assange gave up his source to Ellen Ratner – a core principle which Assange has sworn he would never betray. Again, such a narrative actually undermines the ethical and professional credibility and staunch reputation of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as serious journalists.
Rohrbacker’s approach wasn’t the first interface between US officials and Julian Assange. While Rohrbacher’s approach was a traditional face to face meeting and offer of a pardon, a previous approach was said to have been made by the FBI and CIA agencies in 2017, as reported by John Solomon in 2018, whereby Assange would be offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperation with intelligence agencies in mitigating some of the damage from WikiLeaks release of a CIA document trove. Solomon reports for The Hill:
This yarn begins in January 2017 when Assange’s legal team approached Waldman — known for his government connections — to see if the new Trump administration would negotiate with the WikiLeaks founder, holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy. They hoped Waldman, a former Clinton Justice Department official, might navigate the U.S. law enforcement bureaucracy and find the right people to engage.
Allegedly, FBI director James Comey then intervened later in the process in order to kill the deal.
The Rohrbacher story is just one of many fascinating details which will be introduced during the process of Assange’s hearing which will take place in two parts; in February, and then in May. But with all of these details and revelations, readers should pay close attention to how and why the news is being spun the way it is, and to the benefit of whom. Also, consider the source of the information.
The first half of Assange’s extradition hearing will begin on Monday Feb 24th at Woolwich Crown Court, where US lawyers will make the case that he should be extradited to the United States to face 18 federal counts of espionage and conspiring to commit computer intrusion, totally 175 years in prison – if he is found guilty.
US weapons worth some $715 million dollars were warehoused poorly and soldiers handling them did not keep receipts or records, so it’s impossible to tell how many, if any, ended up in wrong hands, the Pentagon says.
Supply units in Kuwait and elsewhere “did not maintain comprehensive lists of all equipment purchased and received” or “stored weapons outside in metal shipping containers, exposing the equipment to harsh environmental elements, such as heat and humidity.”
This is according to the partially redacted report by the Department of Defense’s inspector general (IG), of an audit into the “Counter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Train and Equip Fund” (CTEF), dated February 13 and published this week.
That is not to say that $715 million worth of US weapons, intended for the Iraqi military and “Vetted Syrian Opposition” – as the euphemism for US-allied militia goes – has gone missing, as some reports may have suggested. In Pentagon-speak, there was “a lack of a central repository for accountability documentation.” Once you cut through the obtuse verbiage, the IG report basically says there’s no way of figuring any of that out, because the troops charged with running the program did not maintain records or receipts.
The audit was commissioned because the DOD has requested $173.2 million for weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other CTEF-S equipment for the current fiscal year, which began in October. Without accurate records, the Pentagon risks buying stuff it doesn’t need and “further overcrowding” the warehouses in Kuwait, which is what caused the pricey hardware to be stored outside in the first place.
Even though the Trump administration declared Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) defeated back in March 2019, ensuring the “enduring defeat” of the terrorists apparently requires that the weapons and equipment must flow. While the US taxpayers don’t have a choice in footing the bill, expecting them to swallow the explanation – that their noble men and women in uniform are just too stupid, lazy or incompetent to keep a ledger – sounds a bit rich.
Washington has a notoriously spotty record of pouring weapons into Syria and Iraq. At one point in 2015, the Pentagon admitted the failure of its program to train and equip “Vetted Syrian Opposition” (also known as “moderate rebels”). Having spent $2 million per fighter, the US saw them defect to the Al-Qaeda affiliate group Al-Nusra, bringing the US-supplied weapons and kit along.
So the Pentagon doubled down in 2016, spending untold millions to train “dozens” of rebels in Turkey. It is unclear how many of those “moderates” took part in last year’s assault on areas held by US-allied Kurdish militias.
As late as September 2016, Al-Nusra commanders openly talked about getting US weapons, both “directly” and via third countries, such as Saudi Arabia. The Syrian government has since dealt the militants one defeat after another, and currently advances on their last remaining strongholds in the Idlib province.
While the US government and media have objected to these operations – and NATO member Turkey actually sent troops and tanks to Idlib in an attempt to halt them – a spokesman for the anti-IS coalition has just openly admitted Idlib is a nest of terrorists.
On Tuesday, February 18, President Trump with excellent judgment commuted the 14 year prison sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, aka “Blago.”
“We have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich,” Trump said. “He’ll be able to go back home with his family after serving eight years in jail. That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion. And in the opinion of many others.”
The President thus brought to an end a disgraceful episode in American politics. After Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, his seat as Senator from Illinois became vacant. Blago was charged with trying to sell the seat.
If in fact Blago tried to sell the seat, he was just practicing the dirty, rotten business of politics in the normal crooked fashion for Chicago and America. But out of all the corrupt pols, why did a federal prosecutor target a sitting governor, wiretap him, not allow him to use the wiretaps to defend himself, and send him to jail for 14 years? His real “crime”, in the eyes of the monstrous Obama and his henchman Rahm Emmanuel, was that he refused to appoint the man Obama picked as his successor.
The indictment against Blago was unconstitutional. As the distinguished historian and authority on the Constitution Kevin Gutzman pointed out in an article written for LRC on January 6, 2009, “Interestingly, one might note that the statute Fitzgerald is enforcing against the governor bases Congress’s claim of power to criminalize corruption in state office on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. One really wonders at the idea that conspiring to sell Jesse Jackson, Jr. a Senate seat is interstate commerce. No one takes this idea seriously; rather, it is based on a common lawyers’ corruption — yes, corruption — of language. On simple federal arrogation of state power. This corruption has far more far-reaching consequences than anything Blagojevich is accused of having done.”
The indictment and trial were gross miscarriages of justice, as President Trump has said. Harvey Silverglate in an article written in 2011 gave the best analysis of the whole rotten business: “The most controversial charge Blagojevich faced was that he planned to sell Barack Obama’s US Senate seat. But Fitzgerald decided to come out swinging, terminated the wiretaps on Blagojevich’s home and office, arrested the then-sitting governor, held a sensational press conference, and called it a wrap before this alleged sale would have even taken place. Fitzgerald was obviously unwilling to wait out the unfolding situation to see if the governor was really serious about “selling” the seat to the highest bidder.
Had Blagojevich actually followed through with the sale of a Senate seat, Fitzgerald’s heavy-handed prosecutorial approach might have been justified. But in light of the fact that no seat was sold, and that these appointments are regularly used for political benefit, the reasonable doubt that a crime was actually committed would appear to be overwhelming. For a US Attorney who is known for “crossing his T’s and dotting his I’s,” you have to wonder why Fitzgerald didn’t spring into action after the sale of the seat, once the dirty deal was done. Blagojevich’s own writing may give us a clue. Blagojevich claims in his memoir, “The Governor,” that the goal of the Senate appointment was to get a political opponent out of the way, not to sell the seat for cash. If this scenario is to be believed, then Fitzgerald went forward with the case when he did because, had he waited until after the seat was filled, there would not have been a case since the seat would have been awarded not for cash, but for quite traditional political advantage.
One of the most shocking, and seemingly damning, sound bites that came from the wiretaps was Blagojevich’s assertion that Obama’s Senate seat was “a [expletive] valuable thing. You don’t just give it away for nothing.” A US Attorney whose last few cases ended unfavorably might be interested in spinning this quote to seem as though a cash transaction was being arranged in exchange for the Senate seat. However, if Blagojevich were looking to use the seat for his political benefit, then his statement would be crass, but would also be evidence that he was operating within the parameters of the law. The type of political maneuvering engaged in by the then-governor may seem to the average citizen (or juror, for that matter), to be less than wholesome, perhaps even a bit sneaky, but if every unwholesome or sneaky maneuver were a crime, we would not be able to build the prisons quickly enough to meet demand.”
Why didn’t Fitzgerald wait? Joe Hall, writing on February 19 in Gateway Pundit has a good explanation. He says that Blago was set up by Mueller, Comey, and the Deep State Gang and that President Trump’s release of Blago may be intended to send the Gang the message that he will fight them. Hall cites investigative reporter Marty Waters, who said last August “that the Deep State, led by Comey and Mueller, did the same thing with the fraudulent Mueller investigation sham as they did in the past. They create distraction, diversion and disinformation. In the early 2000’s they created Plamegate to distract and divert from the billions lost in Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction narrative that got the US into the war. In the mid-2000’s, they created the Rezco/Blagogate scandals to cover up for Obama’s corrupt actions early in his administration and while in the US Senate. The Mueller investigation distracted from the many crimes involving Obama and the Clintons and was in the same mold as the prior sham investigations.”
Hall sums up and concludes: “Of course Mueller was the Head of the FBI throughout most of the 2000’s and before Comey took over the now corrupted institution. Also, Comey claimed Fitzgerald was his attorney after it was suspected that Comey shared classified information with Fitzgerald during the Russian hoax scandal.”
After Trump commuted Blago’s sentence, Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker condemned the President’s decision. He said; “Illinoisans have endured far too much corruption, and we must send a message to politicians that corrupt practices will no longer be tolerated. President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time.”
Pritzker’s self-righteous moralizing is ironic. According to a story in the Chicago Tribune published May 31, 2017, “Pritzker, a billionaire businessman with political ambitions, told Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich he was “really not that interested” in the US Senate seat the governor was dealing in late 2008. Instead, Pritzker offered his own idea: Would Blagojevich make him Illinois treasurer?”
Blago is no angel, but I can’t help liking him. I admire his spirit. He refused to cave to Obama and the higher-ups. Now that he is out, he is free to tell us where the bodies are buried. You can be sure he knows a lot and with the commutation, the Feds can’t shut him up anymore. Blago has Obama on the ropes, and fortunately for those of us who care about truth, he is a skilled boxing champ.
Today, the long-time friend and Trump campaign consultant Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in a federal prison for multiple charges relating to his Congressional testimony and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued Stone’s sentence after his lawyers had first requested that he receive no prison time.
After the sentence was handed down, Stone refrained from making a personal statement to the court.
Normally, one might refrain from criticizing a judge too harshly, but this was no ordinary closing remarks performance, as Judge Jackson seemed to go on forever, attempting to address all of her critics, and seemed compelled to want to justify the premise of the legal proceedings.
After reviewing her statements, to say (and I don’t say this lightly) that she had personal axe to grind is an understatement, and her extended diatribe appears to point to an obvious political agenda.
Judge Jackson wasn’t shy about showing her bias either, remaining in lockstep with the original RussiaGate narrative – even though it’s been proven to be hoax after a 3 year-long Mueller Investigation produced no evidence of alleged ‘Trump-Russia Collusion.’ She clearly attempted to do this here:
“He was not prosecuted for standing up for the president,” said Judge Jackson during her closing remarks. “He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
Only the President did nothing which required covering for.
As that wasn’t enough, the judge went on during her hours-long sentencing hearing to claim that what Roger Stone did was somehow “a threat to our democracy”.
We’re still trying to work out exactly what she is talking about there, or how the 67 year-old Stone became so powerful as to bring down democracy in the United States. I mean, he has certain skills, but take down the United States of America? Here Jackson is dog whistling to the RussiaGate consensus – when in fact there was no collusion between Stone, Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia – nor did Stone have any ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks. Any rational, objective professional might look at that and conclude that there was no underlying conspiracy which this entire Russia Investigation effort was supposed to uncover.
The truth is, Stone’s entire case was erected not only to help maintain the RussiaGate narrative, but to help towards delegitimizing Trump’s historic 2016 upset victory. Validating the hoax also helps to fortify a hawkish US foreign policy against Russia, and all the political, geopolitical and military industrial spoils that go with it.
In response to public comments made by Trump about the trial being a farce, Judge Jackson felt compelled to defend her political show trial, exclaiming that, “There was nothing unfair, phony or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.”
If only it ended there. She kept going, insisting that the Stone case was ‘serious’ and not a joke, which Trump had publicly intimated. “The problem is nothing about this case was a joke,” said Jackson just prior to sentencing Stone. “It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a prank,” said Jackson.
That old Hamlet adage comes to mind, The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Due to the President’s insistence on weighing-in with such vigour, it seems likely that Stone will eventually be pardoned by Trump, but it’s not certain when. Some have speculated that the White House would be better served to wait until after the General Election, but then again, Trump tends to defy the experts on conventional logic.
As I wrote in a feature published this morning at RT International, Roger Stone was simply the last available scalp for the Mueller brigade in order to lend credence to the underlying RussiaGate narrative upon which Stone’s criminal case is built. His criminality was assumed under the guise ‘Trump-Russia Collusion’ which is predicated on the as yet evidence-free official conspiracy theory that Russian GRU operatives hacked the DNC and Podesta and then gave those emails to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. I explained how the underlying assumptions are fallacies and why the underlying assumptions in this case never did raise to the standard of criminality, while all of the little process crimes and reprimand which came during the legal circus was what this judge was compiling to build up Stone’s charge sheet.
In the end, all of this is just more grist to the mill. But for how much longer? The level of panic and desperation surrounding this case, as well as the politicized behavior of the judge and prosecutors – really demonstrated how deeply infected the federal judiciary is with partisan propaganda and conspiracy theories of Russian interference which were debunked long ago.
Any reasonable, objective judge or jury would look at this picture and deduce that there were definitely a lot of things going on here (like things that happen during elections, leaks and campaign bluster), but not a crime. For the prosecution, of the supposed ‘crimes’ came long after 2016, as part of the process of trying to prove there was Trump-Russia Collusion, which there wasn’t.
So one should consider Roger Stone as collateral damage in what is perhaps the greatest political hoax in American history.
As @JonathanTurley noted in 2018, “Even if Stone received early word of the WikiLeaks release, it would not necessarily be a crime for Trump, his campaign, or Stone himself.”
That and fact his case assumed #Mueller would get something substantiative. It never did. #RogerStone
Of course, very few will step forward and stand-up for a character like Roger Stone, and why would they? He’s a flamboyant political operative who cut his teeth working under Richard Nixon of all people. He’s a guy everyone loves to hate, so the support is sparse.
But let’s not forget that back when this all began – it was Stone who told Congress that there was never any Russian involvement. Of course, Stone was right, and the evidence is on his side. Official Washington on the other hand, was wrong. Yet, here we are three years later, still re-litigating an election which happened four years ago.
When will American exorcise its 2016 collective trauma and return to some semblance of sanity?
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been trading the same rhetoric about not having a suitable partner for diplomatic negotiations. The senior adviser and spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, recently took the statement further to again assert the PA’s distaste for legitimate armed resistance. This was his attempt to reassure Israel about the PA’s commitment to remain tethered to failed diplomacy.
“The Palestinians do not want violence and it is very important for us that the Israelis know this and understand that our path is not violent,” Abu Rudeineh told Israeli political correspondents. Why would the PA seek to reassure the colonial presence in Palestine built and maintained upon violence that the colonised population are not seeking to use violent measures to escape from the Israeli yoke?
Unlike Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and other measures such as its colonial settlement expansion, which are clearly defined as war crimes by international law, Palestinian resistance against the colonial violence of occupation is entirely legitimate. Abu Rudeineh is doing Palestinians yet another disservice by refusing to recognise the whole spectrum of the anti-colonial struggle. Furthermore, the PA does not differentiate between various forms of violence, which are defined by context.
It is the Palestinians who should be seeking reassurances that no further violence will be inflicted upon them. However, the normalisation of Israeli violence, combined with the diplomacy which allows Israel to function as a violent colonial state, prevent Palestinians from making such demands.
Protesters at the UN headquarters oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru – Anadolu Agency ]
What’s more, Palestinians are not guaranteed protection from Israeli violence; their rights are simply brushed aside. To make matters worse, Abu Rudeineh has eliminated this factor in his discussions regarding future “peace negotiations” to enable the façade of Israel’s “victim” status to be preserved. In keeping with the parameters set by the international community’s endorsement of Israel’s false “security” and “self-defence” narrative, Abbas’s spokesman is misrepresenting the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and, as a result, regaling Israel with further opportunities to portray itself as the only democratic partner in negotiations. The PA would do well to remember that such talks would not have been necessary if the UN had taken the necessary steps to halt the earlier settler-colonial presence in Palestine and thus prevented Israel from manifesting itself on ethnically-cleansed Palestinian land.
However, the PA is merely absorbing the external narratives imposed by the international community on one hand, and the US on the other, the latter through its so-called “deal of the century”. The constant definition of the Palestinians according to external agendas have damaged the Palestinian cause beyond recognition.
Non-violent resistance and diplomacy have been manufactured by the international community as acceptable paths for Palestinians precisely because, on their own, they fragment the efficacy of anti-colonial struggle. The right to resist colonialism by all means is legitimate, whether diplomatic negotiations are taking place, or might be taking place in the future. Neither the international community nor the PA have the right to prevent Palestinians from exercising their right to armed struggle. It is a decision that must be made by the people themselves, since the Palestinian leadership has long abandoned the Palestinian cause to curry favour with the international community for its own self-serving hierarchy.
There is no need to reassure Israel as Abu Rudeineh has done; the only reminder that Israel needs is that Palestinians have every right to reclaim their land. Beyond that assurance, the PA’s rhetoric must be seen for what it is; an additional means of destroying the Palestinian struggle, for the benefit of Israel and the international community.
There is a lot of misinformation floating out there regarding my meeting with Julian Assange so let me provide some clarity on the matter:
At no time did I talk to President Trump about Julian Assange. Likewise, I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange. I was on my own fact finding mission at personal expense to find out information I thought was important to our country. I was shocked to find out that no other member of Congress had taken the time in their official or unofficial capacity to interview Julian Assange. At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the President because I had not spoken with the President about this issue at all. However, when speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him. At no time did I offer a deal made by the President, nor did I say I was representing the President. Upon my return, I spoke briefly with Gen. Kelly. I told him that Julian Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon. No one followed up with me including Gen. Kelly and that was the last discussion I had on this subject with anyone representing Trump or in his Administration.
Even though I wasn’t successful in getting this message through to the President I still call on him to pardon Julian Assange, who is the true whistleblower of our time. Finally, we are all holding our breath waiting for an honest investigation into the murder of Seth Rich.
The Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard on Wednesday that evidence will be submitted in the extradition case of Julian Assange pertaining to an alleged “pardon offer” made by Donald Trump to the WikiLeaks founder, triggering speculations that it was in exchange for saying that Russia had no role in the DNC leaks.
“It is not outside the realm of possibility that a US Congressman allegedly speaking on behalf of the President offered Assange a Presidential Pardon in exchange of cooperation. If it did happen, it was surely not an offer to Assange to lie”, Former UN Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas believes. “Assange would not have needed to lie, because the evidence indicates that the DNC leaks did not come from Russian hackers. Assange himself said that the source was NOT the Russian government,” he said.
White House denied on Wednesday allegations that President Donald Trump directed former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher to offer WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon if he said Russia had no role in the DNC leaks.
“I do not like the talk of giving ‘pardon’ – because that implies that there has been a trial and a conviction. I do not think that Assange has committed any crime,” de Zayas says. “He is the victim of arbitrariness, irregularities, misuse of the administration of justice systems in the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador. He is a victim of multiple crimes, including psychological torture, as documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Melzer.”
Assange’s Case
Julian Assange was indicted on 18 charges in the United States, mostly espionage after he leaked classified documents revealing war crimes committed by US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also exposed a tranche of documents from the DNC and emails from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign leadership which reveal how the DNC rigged the primary elections in Clinton’s favour and obtained debate questions for the candidate before her televised arguments with Donald Trump.
Assange is currently being held at a high-security prison in London. Several medical experts have expressed concerns that Assange’s current health condition would prevent Assange from properly participating in his defence. If convicted, Assange could face up to 175 years in US prison.
In recent months, the US Air Force has issued calls for ethnic Russians to provide DNA samples for a mysterious “research” program. US Air Force Captain Beau Downey claimed that the samples were required for “locomotor studies to identify various biomarkers associated with trauma.”.
“The request (by the research centre) did not specify where the samples should be received from, but to continue the study, similar samples were required. Since the supplier originally provided samples from Russia, suitable for the initial group of diseases, the control group of the samples should also be of Russian origin.
The goal is the integrity of the study, not the origin (of the samples)”
However, given the fact that the US military has attempted to obtain Russian DNA samples without the permission of the Russian government and furthermore, given the low state of Russia-US relations, many are questioning whether the sought samples are intended to be part of a biogenetic weapons program.
Biogenetic weapons are defined as biological agents designed to inflict debilitating diseases or other internal bodily afflictions on a specific group of people, based on a shared genetic code.
While it is unclear if such a weapon has ever successfully been developed, the US and Israel have in the past, attempted to create such a devastating bio-genetic weapon.
In the late 1990s, it was reported that Israel had successfully created a biogenetic weapon which was specifically designed to target Arabs and only Arabs.
“According to a Jerusalem Post report quoting the London-based Foreign Report, Israel has successfully developed what is being called an ‘ethnic-bullet’, which will target only Arabs. The report quotes an ‘unconfirmed report’ which originated in South Africa, which details how Israeli scientists have made a biological weapon tailor made to attack targets with the Arab genetic system. Long-term studies of Iraqi Jews was credited with providing the genetic code needed to target Arabs. According to the report, the ethnic-bullet program was originally developed for use in Apartheid South Africa for use against blacks. Scientist in both countries worked together towards the development of the Israeli program. Israeli officials declined to confirm the existence of the ‘ethnic bullet,’ but one told the newsletter: ‘We have a basket full of strategic surprises which we will not hesitate to use if we feel that the State of Israel is under serious threat”.
The popular US based technology magazine Wired, also ran a story on Israel’s biogenetic weapons program in 1998. The story reads,
“ISRAEL IS REPORTEDLY developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times. The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The ‘ethno-bomb’ is reportedly Israel’s response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The ‘ethno-bomb’ program is based at Israel’s Nes Tziyona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, ‘particularly the Iraqi people.’
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. ‘Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied.’
Last month, Foreign Report claimed that Israel was following in the ignominious footsteps of apartheid-era research, in their supposed efforts to develop an “ethnic bullet.”
A year later, a report from Reuters citing British scientists, confirmed that such a biogenetic weapon was possible given the advanced state of genetic mapping, although the report neither confirmed nor denied the existence of an Arab killing Israel biogenetic weapon.
Russians are therefore clearly worried that the US military intends to collect samples of Russian DNA in order to engineer a biogenetic weapon similar to the ones Israel is said to have created in the 1990s. The fact that genetic mapping technology has advanced even further since the 1990s, makes this fear all the more magnified.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union feared that the AIDS virus was created in a US military bio-weapons lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. While the story was dismissed by the US as geo-political propaganda, many black Africans and African-Americans continue to believe that the CIA had a hand in either creating or weaponising the AIDS virus. To this day, AIDS continues to disproportionately effect black men across the globe.
The notion that AIDS was part of a CIA experiment aimed at population modification, was spoken of widely in the 1980s. The American musician Frank Zappa even wrote a musical about the alleged phenomenon called ‘Thing Fish’.
In the year 2000, the neocon think-thank that would provide the George W. Bush administration with many important advisers, the Project for the New American Century published a report which spoke of the desirability of weaponising genetically mapped biological agents for use in 21st century warfare. This was one of the factors leading to Russia banning the export of domestic DNA samples in 2007, as was reported in Russian mainstream media at the time.
While exporting Russian DNA samples remains illegal in most circumstances, the US military is still keen on flaunting Russian law.
President Vladimir Putin has responded to the latest attempts by the US military to collect Russian DNA samples in the following way,
“Do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest.
Let them do what they want, and we must do what we must”.
The latter part of Putin’s statement derives from the Melian Dialogue of the Athenian historian Thucydides. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounts Athenian envoys trying to convince the small island of Melos to surrender its sovereignty or be destroyed. The dialogue includes a famous line which is usually translated as “The strong do as they will and the weak submit as they must”.
Putin therefore is suggesting that no matter what the US has in store for Russia, the leadership of the Russian Federation is able and willing to take defensive matters in any scenario. The seemingly cautious statement from Putin, is actually incredibly forceful when read carefully.
Based on past experiences, the US is not operating under innocent intentions and therefore, Russia should not take any chances.
“Elites” should get “a bigger say in choosing the president,” a Washington Post oped has declared, describing a system where regular voters just tell elites their pick and go home to let their betters work it all out.
The popular vote has been declared an anachronistic inconvenience in a WaPooped by Marquette University professor Julie Azari that bemoans the “rocky start” to the Democratic primaries. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the popular vote in the first two states, but this doesn’t match the delegate count, which unsurprisingly favors establishment favorite Pete Buttigieg. It’s best, then — according to Azeri — to throw out the whole system.
Starting from the relatively uncontroversial principle that the current primary system is overly complex and sometimes coughs up unviable candidates, Azari takes a hard oligarchic turn. She calls for further disenfranchising ordinary voters by making their “vote” merely a suggestion given to an elected “intermediate representative,” who then “bargains” with the other representatives without being bound by the wishes of the voters who put them in place.
If that sounds like the nominating system already in place at the party conventions, you’re not wrong. Azeri, it seems, merely wants to extend the elites’ ability to pull the ripcord on populist drift down a step to make even the state primaries safe for her preferred, predetermined form of “democracy.” And if that sounds unfair — surely, she can’t be suggesting party elites rig the primaries — the whole point, in her mind, is to remove “uncertainty” from the nominating process, then allow a kayfabe (controlled, pro-wrestling-style theatre) version in the general contest:
“Democracy thrives on uncertainty — outcomes that are not known at the beginning of the process. But uncertainty doesn’t help parties strategize for the general election.”
But Azari would be hard-pressed to find any rank-and-file voter who would agree that the problem with American elections is “uncertainty” — or that the solution to the real problem is to give less power to the people. It’s not, after all, like the “elites” are underrepresented in circles of power. No one who has made it to the general election in the last 20 years has done so without an Ivy League pedigree, the ultimate elite signifier, and the journalists who write about them (and sell them to the voters) often move in the same elite social circles. A for-show “preference primary” in which the hoi polloi merely “inform elites about voter preferences,” which those elites are free to disregard, would forever seal off the process to genuine democracy, enshrining the “smoke-filled rooms” Democratic National Committee lawyers defended when they were sued over rigging the 2016 primary into procedure for the foreseeable future. At a time when exclusion mechanisms like superdelegates are less popular than ever, to try to shove this “reform” down voters’ throats is almost guaranteed to backfire.
This is, in a way, the point — both of the headline and of WaPo in general: to gaslight the reader into believing there is a national consensus behind the odious ideas it publishes, which are in reality the views of a moneyed oligarchy that feels only disdain for not only “flyover country,” but for the working-class denizens of the cities its members inhabit who keep the lights on and the shelves stocked. If the reader believes “superdelegates for primaries” are a done deal, they’re less likely to take to the streets and start breaking things.
If the response on social media was any indication, Azari’s “fake the consensus” model isn’t doing so hot these days — though it did inspire a bizarre consensus of its own between pro-Trump conservatives, #Resistance liberals, and progressives:
It’s still over a month until April Fool’s Day, and Azari at no point breaks character, so the reader can only assume the piece is meant in full seriousness.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement Ziad al-Nakhala speaks during a televised speech broadcast live from Gaza City on February 19, 2020.
The secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement says the Tel Aviv regime’s plan to return to “the policy of assassinations” against distinguished figures of Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip cannot terrorize Palestinians to acknowledge US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The policy of assassinations will not make the Palestinian people give up their rights, nor will it manage to break up the resistance front. We will respond to any assassination in time, and any act of aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip will be met with resistance that the occupation [Israel] has not experienced before,” Ziad al-Nakhala said in a televised speech broadcast live from Gaza City on Wednesday afternoon.
He added, “The threats of enemy leaders will not intimidate us, nor will make us accept what they have crafted and called the deal of the century. They will not make us relinquish our historical rights in Palestinian lands and al-Quds (Jerusalem).”
‘Oslo Accords bore nothing for Palestinians other than humiliation’
Nakhala also censured the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli regime more than two decades ago, stating that the set of agreements brought nothing for Palestinians other than humiliation, shame and delusions.
“We presented our history as well as our children, and sacrificed them on the altar of delusion of peace. We reaped nothing other than despair that was represented by the deal of the century,” he pointed out.
The Oslo Accords — consisting of Oslo I and Oslo II accords — were signed by the late chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, respectively in Washington DC, in 1993 and Egypt in 1995. The purported goal of the accords was to achieve peace based on the United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and to realize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
The senior Palestinian official also lambasted some Arab and Muslim countries for supporting and acknowledging Trump’s proposal in the eye of the international community.
Nakhala then called upon all Palestinian resistance movements to join forces, and tirelessly protect Jerusalem al-Quds and the Palestinian cause from liquidation.
‘The US decision to declare al-Quds as the capital of Israel was not surprising, given that America is the sponsor of the Zionist project ever since its inception (back in 1948). It is a full partner to this project, and is in fact spearheading the Western project in our region,” he underscored.
On January 28, Trump unveiled his so-called deal of the century, negotiated with Israel but without the Palestinians.
Palestinian leaders, who severed all ties with Washington in late 2017 after Trump controversially recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Israeli regime, immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs to the dustbin of history.”
Palestinian leaders say the deal is a colonial plan to unilaterally control historic Palestine in its entirety and remove Palestinians from their homeland, adding that it heavily favors Israel and would deny them a viable independent state.
Caracas – The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Russian state energy giant Rosneft on Tuesday for “operating in the oil sector of the Venezuelan economy.”
The measure targeted Rosneft Trading SA, the Swiss-based subsidiary of the Russian multinational, and its chairman Didier Casimiro.
“Rosneft Trading S.A. and its president brokered the sale and transport of Venezuelan crude oil,” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement.
The statement listed several alleged Rosneft dealings with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, including 55 million barrels transported between September and December 2019.
As a result, all US assets in which Rosneft Trading and Casimiro hold a larger than 50 percent stake are blocked. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted a 90-day period for companies to wind down their dealings with Rosneft Trading.
White House Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams later gave a press conference, referring to the latest measures as a “significant step.”
“I think you will see companies all over the world in the oil sector now move away from dealing with Rosneft Trading,” Abrams told reporters.
Washington has imposed several rounds of punishing sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil sector, traditionally the source of over 90 percent of the country’s foreign currency income. Financial sanctions against PDVSA were first introduced in August 2017, before an oil embargo was imposed in January 2019. Venezuela’s oil output plummeted from an average of 1.911 million barrels per day in 2017 to 793,000 in 2019.
Following measures against other sectors of the Venezuelan economy, the Trump administration imposed a blanket ban on all dealings with Venezuelan state entities in August 2019, while also authorizing secondary sanctions against third party actors. US officials had repeatedly threatened to levy secondary sanctions against foreign companies buying Venezuelan crude.
With the US embargo driving away buyers in recent months, Rosneft had reportedly been carrying over 60 percent of Venezuela’s crude output before rerouting to other destinations. The company had denied violating US sanctions.
Other multinationals, including Spain’s Repsol and India’s Reliance Industries, have also been warned to “tread cautiously” by the Trump administration. Both companies have stated that they have not violated US sanctions, allegedly by exchanging crude for fuel or diluents.
Rosneft has yet to comment on Washington’s decision, with the company’s shares falling by as much as 5.2 percent in Moscow’s stock exchange. The Russian Foreign Ministry published a statement criticizing the US for “raising international tensions,” while vowing that relations with Venezuela would not be affected.
Venezuelan authorities likewise blasted the latest move, with Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza stating that Caracas “firmly rejects” the measures against Rosneft Trading.
“The measures against Rosneft Trading are aimed against our oil industry […]. They keep attacking the people of Venezuela, trying to generate suffering and difficulties,” Arreaza wrote on Twitter.
The foreign minister added that the Venezuelan government would add the latest measures to a criminal complaint submitted before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Arreaza delivered a 60-page document to the ICC at The Hague last week, arguing that US sanctions represent “crimes against humanity” and can be equated to “weapons of mass destruction.”
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
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![A group of protesters gather in front of United Nations headquarters to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York, United States on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru - Anadolu Agency]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/20200211_2_40796245_52056273.jpg?resize=933%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
