https://www.bitchute.com/video/N6A1dxMwHWOp
On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a passionate speech at Riverside Church in New York staking out his opposition to the war in Vietnam. One year later to the day, he was assassinated. Now, 50 years after that fateful day, the truth about the assassination of Dr. King can finally be told.
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: https://www.corbettreport.com/mlk
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Martin Luther King assassination, United States |
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the preeminent leader of the black liberation movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Millions of people engaged in the struggle against America’s shameful apartheid system but King was the most influential. His actions are remembered, his words are quoted by activists, politicians, and pundits. His birthday is a national holiday. Only the worst and most retrograde racists dare to speak ill of King.
But the lionizing is mostly a sham. In fact there are very few people who remember the importance of what King said, what he did or why and how they should replicate his work. His legacy has been subverted and is now understood only by the most conscious students of history.
Nothing illustrated this state of affairs more clearly than the use of King’s words in a Ram truck commercial broadcast during the 2018 Super Bowl football championship. Viewers were told that Ram trucks are “built to serve.”
The voice over is provided by King himself speaking exactly 50 years earlier, on February 4, 1968. The Drum Major Instinct sermon was a call to reject the ego driven desire for attention in favor of working for more altruistic pursuits. “If you want to say that I was a drum major say that I was a drum major for justice.”
The commercial’s creators deliberately ignored the portion of the sermon in which King derided the influence of advertising. He even mentioned vehicle advertising specifically. He warned that “gentleman of massive verbal persuasion” can influence people to act against their own interests. “In order to make your neighbors envious you must drive this type of car.”
A Nation Going Backwards
Corporate interests are not alone in pretending to honor King while actually attacking him. King’s legacy is severely diminished because it has been used by cynical individuals for corrupt purposes. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his assassination we see a nation that has moved backwards on nearly every front. Legalized discrimination was eliminated but powerful forces undermined progress and America in 2018 is devoid of the change that King fought to make real.
Much of the blame lies at the feet of the Democratic Party, who have an undeserved reputation for enacting progressive policies. In reality, Democrats actively targeted black people for joblessness, poverty, imprisonment and disenfranchisement. Democrats became the party of corporate interests and aligned themselves with every neoliberal initiative. They forsook the union movement, working hand in hand with finance capitalists to take living wage jobs out of the country. Bill Clinton oversaw the end of public assistance as a right, destroying what Franklin Roosevelt enacted 60 years earlier. He built on the work of Ronald Reagan and massively increased the prison population.
Barack Obama offered a “grand bargain” of austerity to Republicans and continued the George W. Bush policy of tax cuts for the wealthiest. The banks which created the 2008 financial collapse were rewarded with huge bailouts of public funds. Black people ended up losing the small bit of wealth they held before the crash and now lead only in the negative measurements of quality of life.
Democrats destroy public education through charter schools and refuse to raise the minimum wage even when they control Congress and have the power to act. They were never the party of peace and they are now most outspoken in encouraging an anti-Russian resumption of the Cold War and supporting imperialist interventions.
After the legislative victories of the 1960s black Americans were ignored, subjugated or co-opted. It is true that there are thousands of black elected officials, when in King’s day there were hardly any. But this political class is a traitorous one and works for its own benefit, its patrons in corporate America and the civil rights organizations that are subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. The black political class went along with every sordid deal that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama pursued. Their positions are secure but the rest of black America is anything but.
Prison Population Explodes
A glaring example is the enormous increase in incarceration rates. When Martin Luther King was alive there were only 300,000 incarcerated Americans. There are now more than 2 million. The exponential increase is not coincidental. Mass incarceration was a direct reaction to the freedom movement. Segregation put black people under physical control and the system devised new ways to secure the same result when it ended.
Black men became the face of drug dealing, or deadbeat fatherhood or anything else that the press and politicians told white Americans to fear and hate. The ripple effect is terrible and damages family life, the ability to earn a living and even to vote. In 48 states felons either lose the franchise permanently or are prevented from voting until all supervision is lifted. In Florida alone 1.5 million people cannot vote because of past convictions. A recent court case declared this rule unconstitutional and if a November 2018 ballot measure passes they may have their voting rights restored. That will be a happy result but there are 5 million more Americans, disproportionately black, who elsewhere lose the ability to vote due to criminal convictions.
Until incarceration becomes a mass movement, political issue, the Voting Rights Act amounts to very little. Actually the act already amounts to little because the Supreme Court nullified its most important provisions requiring southern states to seek permission before changing voting rules. The Democrats are less concerned with getting out the vote than in making their wealthy patrons happy and protecting the Senate majority and federal judiciary they claim is so important.
Of course the Democrats are in a bind. They don’t want to get out the vote because that would mean fighting for the issues that the masses need addressed. The wishes of wealthy, corporate America don’t dovetail with those of working people. Fat cat funders don’t want an increased minimum wage. Getting out the vote would mean biting the hand that feeds. So the people be damned.
King’s Challenge to Militarism Defied
King began his fight for the particular needs of black people in a uniquely oppressive system. As years went by he also opposed the economic system itself and the war in Vietnam. In 2017 the Democrats, including most Congressional Black Caucus members, went along with Donald Trump’s request for a 10% increase of an already huge military budget. They will go through the pretense of complaining when that increase inevitably restricts federal spending for social needs, but they are connivers who hope we miss their charade.
Martin Luther King Jr. with President Johnson in 1966
The liberation movement succeeded against great odds. Most black people then as now lived in the southern states and could not vote. Yet their coordinated mass action won them the franchise anyway. That lesson must not be forgotten as the juggernaut of neoliberal plots threatens everyone.
Every major American city is undergoing an onslaught of gentrification which displaces millions of black people at the whim of finance capital. The politicians who will speak in praise of King today do nothing to stop them. In fact they depend upon their largesse to stay in office.
They do nothing to stop the continued terror of billionaire rule. Instead they assist the richest in grabbing more and more. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos this year became the richest person on the planet. His plans for a new Amazon HQ could be funded entirely by his corporation. Instead cities across the country scramble to give away property and tax dollars to help fund the race to the bottom for workers.
Hollow Admiration
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. should be remembered for his tremendous courage in speaking out against the power of money and the military industrial complex. The poseurs who go along to get along should be silent today. The past 50 years have been so tragic because the hard won victories were deliberately destroyed.
King inspired the people to fight for their needs. He did so when the New York Times and Washington Post vilified him. He spoke against the Vietnam war when his compatriots feared angering Lyndon Johnson. The mass action movement that he led forced LBJ to act when he didn’t want to. If politicians act on behalf of the people it is never because they have the right motives.
That is what we must remember about King. The admiration is hollow unless we do as he and millions of others did and commit ourselves to challenging the system. That will mean openly and loudly denouncing the people committed to destroying what they worked and died to achieve. The worst traitors are the most prominent and well respected. But the respect is undeserved and quite dangerous. The night before he was killed King spoke of getting to the promised land. That won’t happen until the scoundrels are named and opposed. Honoring King’s legacy demands that we do just that.
Margaret Kimberley is Editor and Senior Columnist at Black Agenda Report. Ms. Kimberley serves on the Administrative Committee of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), the Coordinating Committee of Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and the Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.org. She is writing a book about racism and the American presidency. She is a graduate of Williams College and lives in New York City.
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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On March 30, 2018 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) committed cold-blooded murder in Gaza. Thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched peacefully to protest the occupation and declare their right to return to their homeland. The Great Return March was met with gunfire and 18 people died.
The killings were caught on camera but the response from the United States, its allies and their friends in corporate media reveal as much as any photography ever will. The massacre was either disappeared as if it never took place, or was described as a “clash.” The BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the rest of their cohort used this word which implies some equality in defense capability when one side, the one with the dead people, was completely unarmed.
The media covered up for Washington’s friends and politicians were silent. Bernie Sanders’ mealy mouthed response was one of the few to be heard. He called the shootings “tragic” and said that the IDF “over reacted.” Crediting him with these weasel words is damning with faint praise but this minimal response is not surprising given the degree of Israeli influence in American politics.
While the media and the politicians work themselves into a frenzy about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election the Israeli government happily continues its decades long influence over American politics. It is quite open and understood by everyone that obedience to Zionism is a necessity in political life. Any politician who questions Israeli policy is at immediate risk of being defeated by a well-funded opponent. The media also collude and ensure silence on this subject, which is one of the most open secrets in American life.
One need only compare the official and media reaction when any nation declared an enemy is under attack. The differences in treatment are obvious and glaring. When the Iranian government faced domestic protests the United States demanded a United Nations Security Council investigation. Now the U.S. turns the tables and blocks Security Council investigation of Israel’s latest killing spree.
It is always clear who is on the outs with the United States and its NATO friends. There is no evidence that the Russian government poisoned former spy Sergie Skripal. Yet more than 20 countries followed the lead of the U.K. and expelled Russian diplomats over flimsy assertions. Any nation that dared to show skepticism quickly fell into line and repeated the unproven trope. New Zealand initially made the reasonable statement that it didn’t believe Russian diplomats stationed in that country were spies. Just one day later they announced that the expelled Russians wouldn’t be welcome there either. The quick change is itself proof of pressure exerted when the powerful nations want something done.
Everyone from journalists to politicians censor themselves. The process has been perfected to such a decree that no threat needs to be made. Everyone understands the risk of speaking out and few are willing to pay the price.
Consider the story of Steven Salaita, a highly regarded scholar of American Indian history. When he used social media to vent his outrage over Israel’s Gaza war crimes in 2014 he lost a tenured position at the University of Illinois. He eventually recovered monetary damages but four years later he was turned down for every position he sought in countries all over the world. The message is clear to any would-be critics of Israeli policy.
The American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual conference and gets Democrats and Republicans to show up and say the same thing. Any politician who wants to run for office doesn’t stray from Zionist orthodoxy and even those with leftish credentials repeat verbatim the same words as the most hawkish conservative.
In 2014 Congress voted unanimously to support the Israeli government’s killing spree in Gaza. Even the vote to declare war on Japan in December 1941 was not unanimous. Nothing is ever unanimous in Congress. But this coordinated falling in line is itself proof of the heavy handed meddling that is a fact of political life in this country.
Israel would not exist at all without U.S. support. But its supporters have turned the dependency upside down. The recipient of American largesse is firmly in control of the debate and the result is that “serious” journalists keep a straight face when a massacre is labeled as a clash.
Steven Salaita spoke very eloquently about his experience as an opponent of Zionism. “I condemned a brutal ethnocratic state. On this count, I will die unapologetic. And insofar as we are forced to contemplate life in binaries, I prefer unemployment to subservience. My heart is with those who struggle for dignity amid terrible oppression.”
Those are courageous words. We should all strive to do likewise and not hesitate to say that a criminal apartheid state is just that. Like the endless videos showing police murder in the U.S., there was ample evidence of Israel’s brutality before the Great Return March. If Palestinians are willing to brave bullets the very least we can do is speak the truth and perhaps make life a little more difficult for people who interfere with what is left of democracy in this country.
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | AIPAC, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Venezuelan authorities hit back at their counterparts in Panama and Switzerland this week after they approved new measures targeting Caracas.
Panama’s Economic and Finance Ministry announced this past March 27 that a warning was being issued to the Central American country’s banks advising them to limit and “diligently” supervise financial transactions involving 55 top Venezuelan officials as well as 16 private businesses allegedly associated with the Maduro government.
The list includes President Nicolas Maduro, National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena and rectors Tania D’Amelio and Socorro Hernandez, National Constituent Assembly members Diosdado Cabello and Hermann Escarra, Education Minister Elias Jaua, and Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas.
In an official statement, Panamanian authorities categorized the individuals and businesses as being “high risk in the area of money laundering, financing terrorism, and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” No evidence was, however, presented to support the allegations.
Venezuela possesses no nuclear weapons and is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as various other treaties banning the acquisition and development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Similarly, many of those accused by Panama of allegedly financing terrorism belong to institutions which were themselves the objects of violent opposition attacks during last year’s anti-government protests – including the Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, and regional government offices – which the Maduro administration has repeatedly described as “terrorism”.
Speaking Monday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who is included on Panama’s list, fired back, describing the accusations as “fake news” and calling on them to provide evidence.
“Show the accounts, my accounts for example, show where my name, my photo appears,” Saab challenged.
Penitentiary Affairs Minister Iris Varela, who also appears on the list, similarly denied the accusations and called on the Central American authorities to publish a “complete list” of all Venezuelan citizens who own assets in the country, placing special emphasis on those mentioned in the Panama Papers.
“Why don’t they do it [publish the complete list],” she questioned. “Simply because they have assets and fortunes that belong to the [Venezuelan] opposition.”
The recent measures follow close on the heels of an announcement last month that Panama will not recognise the results of Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election, mirroring steps taken by the Trump administration and other regional conservative governments in rejecting the May 20 vote.
Meanwhile, Switzerland also moved to apply sanctions against seven high-ranking Venezuelan functionaries last Wednesday, freezing their alleged assets in Swiss banks and applying travel bans.
In response, the Venezuelan government delivered an official letter of protest to the Swiss charge d’affaires Monday, calling the sanctions a violation of the UN Charter’s ban on unilateral coercive measures and charging Switzerland with “subordination” to Washington and Brussels’ hardline Venezuela policy.
“This erratic action… on the part of a historically neutral country like the Swiss Confederation does not create conditions for dialogue and strengthens extremist positions that seek violent solutions,” reads the text of the letter.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court also issued a declaration Monday rejecting the moves as “illegal”. Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno was named in both Swiss and Panamanian measures.
The latest international actions targeting Venezuela have, however, won praise from members the country’s right-wing opposition, including Popular Will party Political Coordinator Carlos Vecchio, who applauded the Panama measures as “the right path at this stage”.
Vecchio is currently in Paris meeting with center-right French President Emmanuel Macron as part of a European tour aimed at drumming up support for more sanctions against Caracas.
During the meeting Tuesday, Vecchio, together with First Justice party leader Julio Borges and ex-Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma – who is currently fleeing the Venezuelan justice system – called on Macron’s government to apply “more sanctions” against Venezuela and to “halt Petro, gold, and capital legitimation operations,” referring to the South American country’s new crypto-currency. They also urged the French president and other European leaders “not to dialogue” with Caracas.
Opposition presidential frontrunner Henri Falcon, who defied the main opposition in launching his candidacy and has opposed economic sanctions in the past, has yet to issue a public statement with regard to the latest measures from Panama and Switzerland.
So far, only the US and the UK have approved economic sanctions against Caracas, while Canada and the European Union have rolled out sanctions against top Venezuelan officials
International sanctions against Venezuela have been denounced by the UN Human Rights Council as well as by UN Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas, who labeled the US-led measures “crimes against humanity” and called for the International Court of Justice to investigate.
According to Datanalisis, 55.6 percent of Venezuelans oppose economic sanctions against their country, while just 42 percent support individual sanctions targeting top officials.
Edited and with additional reporting by Lucas Koerner from Caracas.
April 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Canada, Latin America, Panama, Switzerland, United States, Venezuela |
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Fear has consistently shaped Zionism’s approach towards the indigenous Palestinians. As Palestinians have been blamed for merely standing in the way of the colonizer, their removal which has entailed multidimensional policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, has been rhetorically rationalized through Orientalist transformations of Palestinians from the original owners of the land into “Islamist” terrorists. While Palestinians face a multitude of structural and physical violence, reoccurring culminations of Israeli aggressions resulting in the mass production of Palestinian death have repeatedly highlighted the always-already dehumanized position of Palestinians in the Western political and public sphere.
The Great Return March, a popular, peaceful protest of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, discloses once again that Palestinians are being blamed for their very existence by Israel and its allies. The protest is a colonized population’s call for the implementation of international law. Gazans are collectively incarcerated, besieged at land, air, and water, denied the right to return – a right that was granted in UN Resolution 194 in 1948 – for seven decades, while simultaneously facing a tremendous humanitarian catastrophe that entails the lack of food, water, and electricity. Reduced to bare existence, Israel regularly bombards them – like in the 2014 war – and tests new weapons on their bodies.
It was not surprising that this time again Israel’s advanced military immediately attacked the protesters. Audio-visual material shared on social media by Palestinians shows how Israeli snipers indiscriminately shot anyone who came near Israel’s “border fence.” This banal violence that resulted in a massacre of Palestinians was encouraged by the Israeli government, largely ignored by Western governments, and legitimized by Western media.
Major news outlets euphemized Israeli aggression as passive response, linguistically appealing to the readers’ implicit Orientalism and rationalizing the use of military aggression against peaceful protesters. For example, the Washington Post wrote about “deadly clashes” (March 30) and CNN narrated that Palestinians were “killed in confrontations with Israeli forces” (March 31). According to a New York Times article (March 30), which merely paraphrased the Israeli narrative, “the Israelis responded.” The same article concludes by retrospectively justifying Israel’s three wars on Gaza as a combat against “the threat posed by rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups, and from tunnels crossing under the border.” Fox News blamed “Gaza attacks” on Hamas. Most reports included pictures of Kuffiye-wearing Palestinians throwing stones. Pictures and videos of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, or of the shootings of unarmed Palestinian civilians – though omnipresent on social media – were omitted.
This fantasy of “clashes” and “confrontations” projects a conflict between two independent countries. Like the Israeli government, media deprives Palestinians of their geo-political and historical context, suggests a parity of power between colonizer and colonized, and implies that Palestinians simply die because they have to, not because they are massacred.
This is also Israel’s standard rhetoric. A cable sent out by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to Israeli diplomats outlines the simple copy-paste tactic the Israeli government has perpetually employed to justify any new killings of Palestinians: as usual, the protest is demonized as “dangerous,” “premeditated,” and a “Hamas-led confrontation campaign.” All Palestinians are rhetorically transformed into terrorists fighting for Hamas, which is depicted as the world’s most dangerous terror organization capable of rapidly destroying Israel. Hence, all violence against Palestinians is necessary self-defense. Concurrently, Palestinians are blamed for their own death – like in 2014, when Naftali Bennett blamed Hamas for a Palestinian “self-genocide.”
Following the narrative behind this widespread criminalization of Palestinian dissent, Palestinians would not protest because of unsustainable living conditions, because of the omnipresence of death, or because they are facing a brutal military occupation – but because they simply hate for no reason. These Orientalist assumptions suggest that Palestinians do not have any agency.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) defined the protests “a call for the end of the state of Israel.” The ADL is right. Palestinian demands, i.e. the implementation of international law, an end of the occupation, and the granting of human rights, would certainly lead to an end of Israel in its current forms. Indeed, Israel is based on settler-colonialism, occupation, apartheid, ethnocracy, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal policies, all of which presuppose the perpetuation of Orientalist, Eurocentric, and Islamophobic racialization and dehumanization of Palestinians, who remain simultaneously unknowable and imagined as violent. Palestinians are seen as guilty for not surrendering and for drawing worldwide attention to their struggle. Hence, they are blamed for their very human survival instinct and for not embracing their own death.
Media narratives reveal that Palestinians are comprehended as a plague. If the Israeli military’s shooting of an unarmed protester is considered a “clash,” then the danger stemming from Israeli weapons is on par with the danger coming from an unarmed Palestinian. Thus, Palestinians do not need to take weapons in order to be understood as dangerous. Their existence is comprehended as an attack per se, and the visibility of that existence continues to haunt the Zionist colonial project, as Israel continues trying to make Palestinians disappear discursively and physically.
– Denijal Jegić is a doctoral researcher in Transnational American Studies.
April 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Israel, United States, Zionism |
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No, it’s not a return to George Kennan and his containment policy. It looks more like a slow strangulation, with mounting pressure everywhere. The furor over the Skripal poisoning case is being raised at a time when moves by the West are going almost unnoticed, eclipsed as they are by the narrative of nefarious Russia. Although it all started in Europe, it’s largely being done the American way.
Recent reports pieced together from different sources lead to the conclusion that a well-thought-out and well-orchestrated campaign is underway. As tensions mount, the US is calling on NATO to step up its combat readiness. At least 30,000 allied troops, accompanied by over 360 fighter planes and roughly 30 warships, should be ready for deployment to a trouble spot within 30 days after NATO commanders put their forces on alert. That proposal is being debated but the US position has generally been accepted. There is hardly any doubt that it will be approved at the NATO summit in July.
This is at a time when the EU is working in unison with NATO to make it easier for those forces to move across Europe. It has been reported recently that US MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will start operating from Greece’s Larissa air base in May. The drones are destined for intelligence missions in sensitive areas. The Greek ports of Alexandroupolis and Thessaloniki have attracted America’s attention as facilities that could bolster the rotating US military presence in the Black Sea. According to media reports, NATO is to have a helicopter base in Alexandroupolis.
After expelling its Russian diplomats, Poland signed a $4.75 billion agreement to buy the Patriot missile defense system from America. The price was supposed to be much higher. Warsaw received a discount because it borders Russia’s Kaliningrad region, where Iskander surface-to-surface missiles are deployed. The 16 launchers cannot protect all of Poland, but they certainly provide more protection for the US forces coming in to reinforce the NATO troops already in place, as well as the American Aegis Ashore missile-defense system that will be operational in 2020. NATO believes that the Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) upgrade sold to Warsaw will be capable of countering Russian Iskanders.
In their March 15 letter, 39 US senators called on the Treasury and State Departments to utilize all the sanction tools at their disposal to fight the Nord Stream 2 project to bring cheap Russian gas to Europe. On March 29, US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman told Russia’s RBK TV that he cannot rule out the possibility that Russian assets in America could be seized over the Skripal case. If Washington goes that far, it will be pure highway robbery. And the response will not be long in coming. That interview took place right after the British parliament had announced an investigation into some money-laundering schemes allegedly associated with Russia. The UK government has unveiled its “Fusion Doctrine” to counter what it’s calling Russian propaganda.
The US policy of making Europeans bow to pressure has been largely successful. The leading European powers — the UK, Germany and France –— are pushing to force the EU to impose new sanctions on Iran, in order to persuade the US not to pull out from the Iran nuclear deal. This is a last-minute attempt to keep the agreement in effect, as it is widely expected that President Trump will not certify it in May. Europeans may bow to American pressure in a bid to appease Washington, but Russia is also a party to the agreement, which cannot be scuttled without Moscow’s consent. Adding additional conditions will violate the terms of the deal. It won’t be supported internationally. If new Iran sanctions are introduced unilaterally by the West, the issue will become a bone of contention that will further worsen relations with Moscow.
What should we expect? John Bolton, the incoming NSA, has already called for a switch from targeted to broad sanctions, which would include the oil and gas sector. Cyber warfare is another domain where the US might step up its anti-Russia efforts. NATO is making moves to bolster its cyber operations. Information battles to win broad public support are already being waged. The diplomatic offensive will intensify. There will be a fight to diminish Russia’s global influence that has grown so much recently.
These tensions weaken European security and might lead to a balancing act on the brink of confrontation, plus an arms race that the US and its NATO allies are not winning. The plans to undermine Russia from within have failed. President Putin enjoys overwhelming support, as the recent presidential election has demonstrated. The economy is far from collapsing. Russia’s international standing has strengthened. Moscow has just scored another win, with India announcing its decision to buy the S-400 Triumph air-defense systems from Russia, worth over $5 billion. The two countries will jointly build four frigates and set up a facility to produce Kamov helicopters. Russia has scored a victory in Syria and greatly strengthened its position in the Middle East.
Russia and the West are at a dangerous crossroads and tensions continue to rise. The alternative is to set their differences aside and launch a dialog on a broad range of issues. The world has changed. There is a broad security agenda that needs to be addressed. That idea has been floating for some time, but without any serious discussion. Russia has tried to launch a dialog but the West has failed to meet it halfway. There are some signs, however, that all is not lost. It’s not too late to switch from hostile actions and bellicose rhetoric to business-like approaches for the common good.
April 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, NATO, Russia, UK, United States |
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The United States should cut all ties with war criminal Israel
If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.
The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border… inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.
So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain.
Last week, the Israeli government described the protests an “an organized terrorist operation” while Gazans are dehumanized by claims that they act under the direction of evil Hamas to dig tunnels and rain down bottle rockets on hapless Israeli civilians. The reality is, however, quite different. It is the Gazans who have been subjected to murderous periodic incursions by the Israeli army, a procedure that Israel refers to as “mowing the grass,” a brutal exercise intended to keep the Palestinians terrified and docile.
The story of what happened in Gaza on Friday had largely disappeared from the U.S. media by Sunday. On Saturday, the New York Times reported the most recent violence this way: “… some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire.” Get it? The Palestinians started it all, according to Israeli sources, by throwing things at the fence and forcing the poor victimized Israeli soldiers to respond with gunfire, presumably as self-defense. The Times also repeated Israel’s uncorroborated claims that there were gunmen active on the Gazan side, but given the disparity in numbers killed and injured – zero on the Israeli side of the fence – the Palestinian shooters must have been using blanks. Or they never existed at all.
The Israelis reportedly also responded to “suspicious figures” on the Gazan side with rounds from tanks, killing, among others, a farmer far from the demonstrations who was working his field. Israeli warplanes and helicopters also joined in the fun, attacking targets on the Palestinian side. Drones flew over the demonstrators, spraying tear gas down on them. One recalls that the major Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 included vignettes of Israeli families picnicking on the high ground overlooking the assault, enjoying the spectacle while observing the light-and-sound show that accompanied the carnage. At that time, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and nearly 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled. If the current slaughter in Gaza continues, it would be a shame to forego the entertainment value of a good massacre right on one’s doorstep.
The reliably neocon Washington Post also framed the conflict as if Israel were behaving in a restrained fashion, leading off in its coverage with “Israel’s military warned Saturday it will step up its response to violence on the Gaza border if it continues…” You see, it’s the unarmed Palestinians who are creating the “violence.” Israel is the victim acting in self-defense.
The newspaper coverage was supplemented by television accounts of what had taken place. ABC News described “violent clashes,” implying that two somewhat equal sides were engaged in the fighting, even though the lethal force was only employed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population.
The backstory to the killing is what should disturb every American citizen. When it comes to disregard for US national sovereignty and interests, the Israelis and their amen chorus in Washington have dug a deep, dark hole and the U.S. Congress and White House have obligingly jumped right in. Since June 8, 1967, when the Israelis massacred the crew of the U.S.S. Liberty, Israel has realized it could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, any time it wants, to anybody… including American servicemen, and the U.S. would do nothing.
Let me speak plainly. The existence of many good Israelis who oppose their own government’s policies notwithstanding, the current Israel is an evil place that Americans should be condemning, not praising. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be receiving 29 standing ovations from Congress. He should be rotting in jail. Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people is nothing to be proud of. That the United States is giving this band of racist war criminals billions of dollars every year is a travesty. That the reputation of American has been besmirched worldwide because of its reflexive support of anything and everything that this rogue regime does is a national disgrace.
Gazans are demonstrating in part because they are starving. They have no clean drinking water because Israel has destroyed the purification plants as part of a deliberate policy to make life in the Strip so miserable that everyone will leave or die in place. And even leaving is problematical as Israel controls the border and will not let Palestinians enter or depart. It also controls the Mediterranean Sea access to Gaza. Fisherman go out a short distance from the shore to bring in a meager catch. If they go any farther they are shot dead by the Israeli Navy.
Hospitals, schools and power stations in Gaza are routinely bombed in Israel’s frequent reprisal actions against what Netanyahu chooses to describe as aggressive moves by Hamas. Such claims are bogus as Israel enjoys a monopoly of force and is never hesitant to use it.
Over in the other Palestinian enclave the West Bank, or what remains of it, the story is the same. Brutal heavily armed Israeli settlers rampage, poisoning Palestinian water, maiming and killing their livestock and even murdering local residents. Children throw stones or slap a soldier and wind up in Israeli prisons. The settlers are backed up by the army and paramilitary police who also shoot first. The Israeli military courts, who have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, rarely convict a Jew when an Arab is killed or beaten.
And here in America a bought-and-paid-for Congress continues to do its bit. Last week President Trump signed the so-called Taylor Force Act, part of the marathon spending bill, which will cut aid going to the Palestinian Authority while also increasing the money going to Israel. Back in January, Congress had also cut the funding going to support Palestinians who are still living in U.N. run refugee camps in spite of resolutions demanding that they should be allowed to return to their homes, now occupied by Israeli Jews. During the perfunctory debate on the measure, Congressmen were lied to by pro-Israel lobbyists who claimed that Arabs are terrorism supporters and use the money to attack Israelis.
I could go on and on, but the message should be clear to every American. There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. This horror must end.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
April 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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The Russian Foreign Ministry says it can’t discern how to convene a NATO-Russia Council in the current climate, considering absurd NATO’s statements regarding a readiness for dialogue while expelling Russian diplomats.
“Yes, indeed, seven people have been declared undesirable. And they (in Brussels) have announced that they will not issue visas to three other employees,” Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko stated at the Valdai Discussion Club’s event.
According to the diplomat, the next meeting of the Russia-NATO Council (NRC) cannot be convened under the conditions of Russian diplomats being expelled.
“NATO, expelling Russian diplomats, cuts the branch on which it sits. This contradicts the numerous statements made by the Secretary-General and other representatives of the alliance about NATO being interested in a political dialogue and the convening of a regular meeting of the NRC… How can it be convened under these conditions?” the Alexander Grushko said.
Moscow does not rule out that the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom has been designed to justify the growing defense spending of NATO among other reasons, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko stated.
“I think that all this was planned, including due to the fact that it would be necessary to explain to the public in the near future where the money is going because it is colossal spending,” Grushko said when asked whether Moscow expected NATO to increase defense spending over the so-called Skripal case.
Euro-Atlantic solidarity around Skripal case has become a direct danger to European security, according to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister.
Moscow does not exclude that the Skripal case was plotted as the argument for NATO’s increase in defense expenditures, a great enemy is needed, the deputy minister said.
“NATO has crossed the line when it continued to expand its defense presence at Russia’s borders. Today, the situation along our borders has changed dramatically and in fact, not only in terms of politics but also in the field of military development, NATO has resorted to Cold War schemes that should have remained in the past and today cannot provide security… without Russia,” the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation noted.
London decided to follow a provocative path to support an atmosphere of Russophobia, Grushko said.
“It is obvious that this is a provocation. The whole situation was turned upside down, an ideological campaign was built in such a way as to exclude a normal dialogue, professional, in fact, what happened. The UK refused to use legally binding instruments, which are fixed in the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Therefore, these are all signs that this is a provocation chosen at a special moment in order to further aggravate the relations between Russia and the West, worsen the prospects for a return to normalcy, and prevent the transition to cooperation schemes in the areas of common interest,” Alexander Grushko stated.
Western countries, making claims over Russia on the “Skripal case”, should have understood that it is impossible to speak with Moscow in the language of ultimatums, Grushko emphasized.
“An ultimatum was delivered, which was not intended to be answered because the people who formulated this ultimatum could not fail to understand beforehand that this is not the language in which one can speak,” he said.
Moscow will answer in an asymmetric way to any unfriendly NATO move in order to protect our interests, Grushko noted.
RT, Sputnik Facing Pressure in West Due to Effective Work
“By the way, why are they closing Sputnik and Russia Today? For one simple reason – because they [media outlets] carry out their function effectively, they really influence public opinion,” Grushko said.
Tensions between Russia and Western countries began to grow after the Salisbury incident, where Sergei Skripal, former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter Yulia were harmed by a nerve agent. The UK accused Russia of orchestrating the attack and expelled 23 Russian diplomats. The move has been supported by more than 25 countries, despite of the fact that Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations and cited the lack of proof.
April 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | Canada, NATO, UK, United States |
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Photo credit – Said Khatib, AFP
NPR, as FAIR has noted throughout the years (e.g., 8/14/01, 11/01, 2/5/02, 11/15/12, 10/10/14), takes a default pro-Israel line when reporting on the affairs of Israel/Palestine. Its correspondents almost always live in West Jerusalem or in Israel proper, are rarely Palestinian or Arab, and they work consistently to deflect blame for Israeli violence—either shifting blame onto Palestinian victims or dispersing it through false parity.
A segment from Friday (All Things Considered, 3/30/18) on Israel’s killing of Gaza protesters provides a case study in this process. NPR host Ari Shapiro set up the segment, an interview with reporter Daniel Estrin, by blaming the 17 dead and hundreds of injured Palestinians on “the militant group Hamas,” framing Israel as totally defensive. From the very first line, blame is deflected from the Israeli military:
Today saw some of the most violent clashes in years between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops.
We do not have one party’s snipers opening fire on another, unarmed party; we have “violent clashes”—a term, as FAIR (8/12/17) has noted before, that implies symmetry of forces and is often used to launder responsibility. The whitewashing got worse from there:
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza answered the militant group Hamas’ call to protest.
Palestinians have no organic reasons for wanting to protest the occupation of their homes; the whole thing was a top-down decree from “the militant group” Hamas.
They threw rocks and firebombs near the border fence with Israel. On the other side, Israeli troops assembled.
This conveys the impression the Israeli military was just sitting around, minding its own business, when it was aggressively attacked by hundreds of Palestinians, then responded to this assault.
The “firebombs” claim is repeated later in the piece by Estrin himself: “Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires.” This isn’t qualified with “according to the IDF” or “the Israeli government”—even though as of now, there’s no independent evidence firebombs were used, much less used before any sniper fire from Israel.
The issue isn’t trivial: The matter of first blood when it comes to the Palestinian/Israeli “conflict” is a crucial one (FAIR.org, 12/8/17); framing Israel as always responding to threats, rather than inflicting aggressive violence on an occupied people, is a critical difference. And subtle framing devices like “clashes,” distorting timelines of who did what, or morphing IDF claims of “firebombs” into fact are how media keep this myth alive, and further delegitimize Palestinian resistance. (It should be borne in mind that opposition to occupation, even armed opposition, is a right guaranteed by international law.)
When FAIR pointed out to Estrin on Twitter that he had reported the “firebombs” as fact and not a claim by the IDF, he responded, “I reported the firebombs as an Israeli claim.” When FAIR showed evidence he and host Shapiro had done the opposite, Estrin deflected: “Be kind; it’s live radio.”
“Explain why this violence broke out today,” host Shapiro asked. It’s not a massacre or an attack or “firing on protesters,” as it is when official US enemies do it; it’s simply “violence breaking out.”
Estrin again took care to re-establish Hamas as the “driving force” and guilty party:
And it was billed as an independent Palestinian protest campaign. But actually Hamas, which controls Gaza, was a driving force.
This effectively militarized the whole of the protest, treating it not as an outpouring of popular grievances but as an operation quarterbacked by “a militant group.” This is where Estrin asserted the protesters used “firebombs” without attributing the claim to the Israeli attackers. Instead, he cited the IDF as a source on crowd size:
And according to the Israeli army, there were more than 30,000 Palestinians at six different spots along the border. Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires. Israel fired tear gas and live fire. It was the most violence in Gaza since the Gaza War in 2014.
A brief mention of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza was thrown in, but it is blamed on an “ongoing internal Palestinian political fight” that has made the situation “even worse.” Estrin then erroneously told listeners “Hamas took control of Gaza by force a decade ago,” when Hamas actually gained power in Gaza in 2006 through an internationally recognized election. In 2007, Hamas won a civil war with US-backed Fatah, the faction it had defeated in the election, but to say Hamas “took control of Gaza by force” falsely paints it as an usurping force with no legitimate authority.
Asked what will happen next, Estrin shrugged and says more of the same, and that is it.
It’s a brief report, but a highly revealing one: Hamas is at fault, the Palestinians threw “firebombs” first, then the Israeli army “assembled.” The illegitimate Hamas astroturfed the protest, the people are being exploited. Israel just killed those 17 protesters in self-defense.
You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR’s contact form or via Twitter: @EJensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
April 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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One of the darkest stains on President Barack Obama’s record is his active support for enslaved child soldiers in the name of the “national interest,” an abomination which blackens not only the president’s legacy but also that of Hillary Clinton.
As she battles toward the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has been preaching “love and kindness” to mainstream voters who view her as a humane alternative to the walking human rights violations named Trump and Cruz. “I’m going to keep saying it,” she said again during her Super Tuesday victory speech, “I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness.”
However, too many of Clinton’s actions have demonstrated a glaring absence of love and kindness. Ranking high among these is her support for child soldiers. As Obama’s former secretary of state, she signed off on presidential policies that used American taxpayer dollars to provide training and military hardware to armies in which enslaved children are forced to kill, rape, torture, plunder and die, and it seems as if none of the self-proclaimed human rights advocates who support her care. Or maybe they just don’t know. For those who don’t know, here’s a little background info:
In his last year in office, President George W. Bush signed into law the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), which prohibits US military aid to nations whose armies include child soldiers among their ranks. CSPA contains a “national interest” waiver clause allowing the president to ignore the military aid ban if it is determined that granting such assistance to nations which violate the law serves the national interest.
In 2010, Obama issued a presidential determination granting CSPA waivers to Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan and Yemen. The president sent his memo to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arguing that it was “in the national interest” in the war against terrorism to continue providing training and equipment to these countries’ armed forces even though they use child soldiers. He assured that his action was a one-off. Clinton implemented the waivers without any public objection.
The following year, Obama shocked human rights advocates around the world when he once again granted sanctions waivers to the same four countries. There was less surprise in 2012 when Obama granted, and Clinton implemented, waivers for South Sudan, Libya, Yemen and, partially, DRC. This, shortly after Obama delivered a rousing speech to the Clinton Global Initiative—an address attended by Hillary Clinton—in which he condemned the use of child soldiers, saying, “when a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed, that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.”
Unless, of course, it is determined that such barbarism is in the “national interest.”
In 2013, Obama granted waivers to Chad, South Sudan, Yemen and, partially, DRC and Somalia. In Chad, US-backed government forces were known to forcibly conscript children as young as 8 years old as recently as 2007. In South Sudan, the United Nations found that more than 9,000 child soldiers, many of them not even teenagers yet, were fighting on both sides of a brutal civil war. In DRC, where a decades-long conflict has claimed millions of lives, widespread child rape is a weapon of war used to terrorize targeted populations into submission. US-backed Congolese armed forces routinely kidnap girls as sex slaves.
By 2014, no one was surprised when Obama again granted CSPA waivers to five countries using child soldiers—Rwanda, Somalia, Yemen, DRC (partial) and Central African Republic (partial). He did so again last year, adding Nigeria and South Sudan to the list of exempted nations. All told, Obama has granted “national interest” waivers to authorize around $1 billion in military aid, including training and arms sales, to countries where child soldiers are exploited.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), who authored CSPA and serves as vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, has called Obama’s repeated decision to provide taxpayer-funded military aid to countries whose armies enslave children as soldiers “an assault on human dignity.”
“Children belong on playgrounds, not battlegrounds,” asserted Fortenberry. “It is unconscionable that the United States of America continues to facilitate the militarization of children, whose innocence is stripped as they are forced to fight and kill—and are subjected to the real likelihood that they will be killed themselves.”
However, Obama has repeatedly calculated that America’s “national interest” trumps the lives of children forced to kill and die, to rape and be raped and to endure and commit other horrific crimes that no adult, let alone child, should ever have to face. Hillary Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, signed off on the president’s first three rounds of CSPA waivers without objection, just as she supported the Bush-Obama war against terrorism—including the disastrous Iraq invasion—that has claimed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Yet Clinton’s support for child soldiers hasn’t even been mentioned in any of the debates, town hall meetings or even by her Republican rivals. Shining light on this most despicable of practices simply does not serve the “national interest,” it seems.
April 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Obama, United States |
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The Chinese commentators consistently paint a pessimistic outlook for the troubled relations between Russia and the West, which no doubt form a crucial template of Beijing’s foreign policy. China is a “stakeholder” in the tensions between Russia and the West. Beijing must be acutely conscious that there has always been a significant (albeit not influential currently) school of opinion in the West, including in the United States, that a rapprochement with Russia will make sound long-term strategy to effectively contain China’s rise, which must be the West’s top priority.
Nonetheless, a news analysis by Xinhua with a Moscow dateline has simply gone overboard in making some hasty conclusions about the state of play in the backdrop of the Skripal spy case that has suddenly invaded the centre stage of Russia’s ties with the West:
· With the inertia of the sanctions spiral going on, Russia and the West are expected to continue the hostility in the diplomatic sphere and even expand it to other areas that are more painful for both sides in the foreseeable future.
· Although the question hanging over the spy-poisoning attack remains unanswered, one thing is for sure: Russia’s reputation has been damaged in the eyes of the international community while the alliance between the United States and Europe has been consolidated… It is widely expected that the tensions between Russia and the West will not ease off anytime soon.
Is the state of play so hopeless? Xinhua has exaggerated. Things look gloomy but are not beyond salvation. Russia’s tensions with the West are actually not so serious as China’s own tensions with the West. But then, China is much smarter than Russia in its diplomacy in finessing these tensions. China also has the advantage that it was not a Cold-War adversary of the West in the sense in which the former Soviet Union got pitted in the “bipolar” world. China did splendidly well to exploit the rivalry between the US and USSR.
Russia is the main target today, because it is also the only power that has the capability to maintain global strategic balance and it has an ideological position with regard to the US’ hegemony, which it is determined to uphold no matter the costs involved — although Russia is not a communist country any more. Besides, Russia is not like any other country. It is a European power historically, culturally, economically and politically. And Russia’s habitation and name in a common European home profoundly impacts the US’ transatlantic leadership role.
China being an Asiatic country can run with the hare and hunt with the hound – making the best of both worlds by keeping a quasi-alliance with Russia while also on parallel track going in top gear to tap into the western markets to get fatter and richer. China’s supreme advantage is that it lacks any ideology (other than nationalism and self-interests). Russia takes a principled stance but China keeps its head under the parapet if its interests are not affected. If the tensions run high in Russia’s relations with the West, China is its beneficiary.
However, Russia’s tensions with the West over the Skripal case are more complex than what Xinhua has reported. It is discernible that European countries have been reluctantly dragged into the Skripal case. (Blood is thicker than water, after all.) The big question is how far the US collaborated with Britain. In my assessment, the jury is still out.
There are unanswered, unanswerable questions. The most important thing is that the Skripal case might have got dovetailed with the “anti-Trump” project of the Washington establishment. In particular, was this the swan song of Lt. Gen. HR McMaster (who was expecting dismissal for the past several weeks)? Is it a counterattack by the “Deep State” to keep Trump off balance just when he began making moves to put together a new team in his cabinet with a view to force his will on foreign policies?
Has there been an orchestrated (Anglo-American) attempt involving the intelligence agencies to force Trump’s hands? How much is the Skripal case entangled with the campaign over Trump’s “collusion” with Russia? Most important, where exactly does Trump himself stand in all this?
To my mind, Trump is not seeking confrontation with Russia, and if anything, his phone call to British PM Theresa May might have had a salutary effect on London, which has since noticeably piped down on the Skripal file. Read the White House readout of the phone call, here. There is no trace whatsoever here that Trump is traveling on a path of confrontation with the Kremlin.
In fact, neither Trump nor Vladimir Putin wants this “to be going beyond hysteria over diplomacy” – to borrow words from Xinhua. Trump has always had great conceptual clarity in his mind that it is China – and not Russia – that is the US’ real adversary.
Any longtime observer of Russian-American relations would know that most of the time things are never really what they’ve appeared to be on surface. The two big powers are greatly experienced in navigating through choppy waters. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to me that TASS has just at this juncture highlighted the prospect of a summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Given the longstanding media culture in Moscow, it is inconceivable that the state news agency would have carried such a report on its own volition reflecting on the Kremlin leader. There is, for sure, some very serious “signaling” going on.
April 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | China, Donald Trump, Russia, United States |
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WASHINGTON – More than 75 percent of Americans think that the major TV networks and newspapers report fake news, a new Monmouth University Poll stated.
“More than 3-in-4 Americans believe that traditional major TV and newspaper media outlets report ‘fake news,’ including 31 percent who believe this happens regularly and 46 percent who say it happens occasionally,” a press release on the poll results said.
The release said the 77 percent who believe there is some reporting of ‘fake news’ is up from 63 percent last year in the same poll.
Most Americans think “fake news” applies to the way news outlets decide what to report, while 25 percent think news stories that are incorrect are “fake news.”
Eighty-three percent of Americans think outside groups are trying to plant fake stories in mainstream media.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted on March 2-5, amidst a random sample of 803 adults. The survey’s margin of error is 3.5 percent with 95 percent confidence.
April 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
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